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DISCIPLINE 
AND THE DERELICT 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

HBW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS 
ATLANTA • SAM FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 

LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCOTTA 
MBLBOURNK 

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, L-m. 

TORONTO 



DISCIPLINE 
AND THE DERELICT 

Being a series of essays on some 
of those who tread the green carpet 



BY 

THOMAS ARKLE CLARK 

Dean of Men, Uniyersity of Illinois 



Jl3eto gorfe 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
1921 

A.U rights reserved 



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Copyright, 1921, 
By the MACMILLAN COMPANY 



Set up and electrotyped. Published March, 1921. 



APR -6 1921 



©C!,A611493 



PREFACE 

Human nature is strangely similar wherever we 
find it. The college undergraduate does not differ 
widely in characteristics whether we meet him in Cal- 
ifornia or Massachusetts; in Michigan or Mississippi. 
The deductions which are contained in these essays 
are drawn from an intimate and an extended asso- 
ciation with undergraduate students at the University 
of Illinois ; they might, however, have been written at 
any other institution where similarly close relation- 
ships were possible. 

Thomas Arkle Clark. 

Urbana, Illinois. 



CONTENTS 

PAOC 

Discipline and the Derelict i 

The Borrower 27 

The Undergraduate and Graft 48 

Youngest Sons and Only Children 67 

" And Some Must Work " 8g 

The Politician log 

The Cribber I2g 

The Athlete 155 

The Loafer 174 

The Fusser i8g 



DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

As long as we deal with youth we shall have pretty 
regular violation of rule in college. " How long are 
we to have student outbreaks, and student irregu- 
larities ? " our president asked me not long ago. 
" Can't you ever get the boys educated so that we shall 
not be longer troubled with these things ? " "I 
could, I think," was my reply, " if I were allowed to 
work with them long enough. But when they are 
educated they leave us. A big new crowd of young 
ones is introduced every year, and the process of edu- 
cation must be begun again." 

I remember being asked at one time, with reference 
to an action taken by the executive body of the Uni- 
versity, what caused the members to vote as they did ? 
When I put the question to one of the officers con- 
cerned, his reply was that it was a question which no 
one could intelligently answer. No two men, he said, 
have in mind the same reason or purpose in coming 
to any conclusion. I vote for an issue for one reason, 
my neighbor for another. It is all a matter of per- 
sonal judgment. The same thing is true, I have no 
doubt, with reference to the college derelict. The 
purposes in the mind of half a dozen different indi- 
viduals who vote to impose a penalty upon an under- 
graduate who has been guilty of a violation of college 
rules are probably in no two cases alike. In the 
main, I take it, however, there is little if any thought 

1 



2 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

in the mind of most men that such discipline is to 
punish the offender as the state for instance might 
punish crime. The purpose I have kept before 
me in whatever I have recommended is, first of 
all, to correct the offender, to turn him in the 
right direction, to make it less likely that he will of- 
fend in this regard again. The main function of ed- 
ucation as I see it is to make good citizens. There is 
a further one, of course, which discipline subserves, 
and that is a deterrent one. Offenders are disci- 
plined because it is hoped by that method to call the 
attention of others to the fact that certain things are 
objectionable or wrong, and so to reduce the tendency 
to such irregularities. 

There are those whose ideas of right and wrong are 
so rigid, whose feelings are so strong, that they in- 
sist that every one who does wrong should submit to 
a definite punishment which will inflict upon him a 
certain amount of pain and disgrace. Not long ago I 
received a letter from one of our former students, 
saying that when he transferred his credits from a 
neighboring institution to the University of Illinois 
he had changed two of the grades, and so had received 
credit for five hours of work to which he was not en- 
titled. He asked to have this error corrected, and 
said that when he returned next year to finish his 
college work he wished to register for the five hours 
stolen and earn his credit honestly. There was a 
wide range of opinion among our officials as to what 
action should be taken in his case. The error was 
one which by no possibility would have been detected 
had he not admitted it, and it was an error which af- 
fected no one but himself, since no one else knew of 



DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 3 

it. One university officer felt strongly that notwith- 
standing the fact that the man had confessed and ex- 
pressed a desire to make good the false credits, here 
was a case which demanded punishment, a more com- 
plete expiation, and he thought that the student 
should be expelled. I felt very differently. It 
seemed to me that a young fellow who had the cour- 
age to confess a dereliction of this sort and to offer 
to make such restitution as was possible was well on 
the way to good citizenship, and should be met half 
way. In his case the purpose of discipline had been 
accomplished. 

Each institution employs its own methods in the 
handling of disciplinary matters. If the college is 
small, the president often is the autocrat who decides 
the fate of the untoward. Sometimes it is the faculty 
as a whole which deliberates long and seriously over 
the cases of delinquents. In my own undergraduate 
days when a young fellow had been drunk, had 
danced in a college building, had carried away the 
campus fence to add fuel to the bonfire in celebra- 
tion of Hallowe'en, or had backed the cannon into 
the sluggish campus creek in order to show his dis- 
approval of military drill — when he had done any of 
these things and was caught, he was brought before 
the entire faculty, assembled in serious session, and 
here he was tried. It was a harrowing experience, 
and not one always likely to bring justice. When 
an entire faculty deliberates on disciplinary matters, 
there is likely to be much talking, some wrangling, 
and uncertain conclusions. The responsibility is too 
widely scattered, and the student and good order 
are likely to suffer. 



4 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

In many institutions these matters are left en- 
tirely in the hands of the students who through 
one sort of organization or another sit upon the 
cases of offenders against good order and college 
regulations and pass judgment upon them. At other 
places such matters are handled by a small commit- 
tee of the faculty, or there may be a combination of 
these various methods in operation in the same insti- 
tution. Since I have been a college officer I have had 
more or less experience with all of these methods. 

When I was in college I have no recollection that 
discipline was often enforced. The institution, just 
previous to my entrance, had recovered from a rather 
serious attack of student government in its worst 
form, and disciplinary affairs were running along 
pretty much by themselves. There was cribbing, but 
no one seemed to pay much attention to it. I have 
no remembrance that any one was ever called to 
account for dishonesty or in any way punished for 
it during my whole college course. There were 
student outbreaks, but if anything was ever done 
to the individuals concerned, they petitioned the 
faculty, peace was restored, and the offenders were 
immediately reinstated in their former positions. 
]S[othing short of a riot ever aroused any comment 
on the part of the faculty, for with us at that time, 
as I have said, it was the faculty before whom 
the culprit appeared, who heard the evidence, and 
who after much talk and discussion, pronounced the 
verdict. 

For myself, I believe that college discipline may 
best be administered through a small group or com- 
mittee of the faculty. The entire faculty of any 



DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 5 

college is too large for such a purpose, and is too 
conglomerate and bizarre. A man or a woman may 
be a very good teacher without having any of the 
judicial qualities which are required in passing upon 
cases of discipline. Every extreme of attitude to- 
ward the violations of college regulations will be 
found in any faculty, from the man who would con- 
done any overt act to the one who would guillotine 
or burn at the stake the perpetrator of the most 
trifling prank. The time necessary to be consumed 
by a college faculty in this sort of work, if it is taken 
at all seriously, is beyond all reason, and in the end 
offers little likelihood of justice to the student. 

It has never seemed to me good policy that the 
president of an institution should have entire charge 
of disciplinary matters, not only because the time of 
the president of any institution is ordinarily taken 
up with other matters of equal importance, but also 
because I do not think such matters should ever be 
wholly in the hands of one man. The cases are 
frequently so puzzling and so complicated and so 
hard to unravel that several heads are better than 
one. In cases where the evidence is not overwhelm- 
ingly convincing it is a comfort to feel that one has 
other men upon whose judgment one can rely and 
upon whom one can fall back in case of difficulty. 
Every college president who does not think himself 
omniscient will feel the same way. 

Many institutions throw the burden of deciding 
all disciplinary cases, such as those concerned with 
cribbing, and stealing, and drinking, upon a commit- 
tee of students or a student council. I have talked 
with a number of college officials the disciplinary 



6 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

affairs of whose institutions are so managed, and 
they all expressed themselves as well satisfied with 
the result. One officer who was in general charge of 
undergraduate affairs in the institution to which he 
belonged said, in speaking to me, that he should not 
himself want to assume the responsibility of deciding 
the complicated matters which arise in connection 
with student discipline ; they seemed to him too diffi- 
cult to solve, but he was very well satisfied to leave 
such things with the students who were doing it 
seriously and satisfactorily. His viewpoint seems to 
me very much as if a banker might say that his 
financial affairs were so complicated and tangled and 
so difficult of intelligent solution that lie was more 
contented to turn them over to his children to be 
dealt with than to settle them himself. 

I have always had an abiding faith in students, 
and I am quite sure that when they set themselves 
seriously to the accomplishment of even a difficult 
task it is likely to be done well; but I have had ex- 
perience in disciplinary matters and know something 
of other executive problems which may come before a 
college officer. There is nothing with which I have 
had to do officially that requires such careful judg- 
ment as disciplinary matters — such diplomacy, such 
sympathy, such firmness, such freedom from preju- 
dice and bias, such skill in handling all who are con- 
cerned with the affair. If the lines between good 
and evil, between truth and falsity, could always be 
clearly drawn, if motives and the influences which 
surround the erring student did not have to be con- 
sidered, if, in short, we were not dealing with the 
most subtle and intangible things when we are trying 



DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 7 

to mete out justice in discipline, I should be willing 
perhaps to tnist these matters to the experience of 
students. But I know-how hard these matters are 
to decide with fairness, how easy it is to make an 
error, how difficult, if not impossible, to correct one 
after it is made, and how much is at stake for the 
undergraduate concerned. 

The greatest handicap in my experience to success- 
ful college discipline is the number of rules laid 
down by the college authorities for the conduct of 
students. Many college officers feel that when an 
evil exists or an erroneous custom prevails the only 
thing necessary is to pass a regulation against the 
evil or the custom, and the matter is settled. I have 
found that I can in the long run do far more by 
suggestion and persuasion than by rule, and do it 
much more to the satisfaction of the students con- 
cerned, for often it is possible to have them feel 
that they have done it themselves. Generally the 
more rules an institution has, the more difficulty 
officers find in maintaining good order, and in keeping 
the young people within bounds. 

It is safe to take for granted that young people of 
college age know in the main what is right and what 
is reasonable as to conduct, so that it is not necessary 
that every sin in the decalogue or that every viola- 
tion of law under the statute should be named in the 
college catalog and the penalty for its violation at- 
tached. Rules often prevent individual action in 
specific cases. Every violation of good order should 
be taken up, looked into, and judged as if it were 
the only one of its sort. Rules often hamper such 
judgment. Only a short time ago the members of 



8 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

our own disciplinary committee were discussing the 
penalty which was about to be recommended for a 
student who had been somewhat irregular in conduct. 
"I should be glad to vote for this penalty," one 
of the members said, " if it did not seem to me incon- 
sistent with what we have previously done in similar 
cases. The last man we had before us who had been 
guilty of a similar irregularity received a much more 
severe penalty." 

" Any one who has been on this committee long," 
a second member answered, " must realize that its 
chief virtue is that it never pretends to be con- 
sistent. It treats men as individuals, and we have 
never met two individuals alike." 

Many college rules are virtually a dead letter 
because they are difficult or impossible of enforce- 
ment, and the existence of such regulations can do 
nothing less than bring the whole system of college 
statutes into ridicule and disrepute. If a rule is 
made, some effort should be made to enforce it; 
though many people think that laws in themselves 
carry weight, even if allowed to go unexecuted. 

More than this, the very existence of regulations 
will frequently incite students to insubordination 
that would not otherwise have been thought of. 
" I've just discovered," one freshman said to another, 
" that it's against the rule to smoke in the quad- 
rangle. Now I suppose it will make me sick, but I 
couldn't let a thing like that go by without having 
a try at it." I am not arguing against regulations 
per se; some, of course, are necessary for the proper 
conduct of any business or institution, but the fewer 



DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 9 

the better, and then only those which are absolutely 
necessary. 

The best way to manage the student guilty of 
misconduct is to look after him so personally and so 
carefully that he may be brought to account just 
before he has been guilty of the act which would sub- 
ject him to discipline. The most skilful disciplinary 
work which I have ever done has been connected with 
the things that never happened, because they were 
not allowed to do so. 

Granted that the college has made few rules, and 
that there is some one who keeps himself thoroughly 
conversant with what is going on, there will still be 
misconduct, and necessity on the part of college 
officers to exercise authority. Youth is still young 
and curious and irresponsible, and is quite as likely 
to be guided by impulse as by judgment. As I have 
said, I believe that disciplinary matters in college 
will be more satisfactorily handled to all concerned 
if put in charge of a small committee of the faculty 
composed of from three to five persons chosen be- 
cause of their knowledge of student life and condi- 
tions, and because of their special fitness to form 
reasonable and sympathetic judgments on the cases 
that come before them. The members of such a 
committee should be young or should have once been 
young with the memory of that time in mind, and 
their appointment should so far as possible be a 
permanent one. They should be broad-minded, and 
above petty prejudices ; they should still be interested 
in the things outside of books that interest normal 
healthy young people, — such as athletic sports and 



10 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

social pleasures; they should have high moral and 
scholastic ideals. They should have hackbone enough 
when an unpleasant thing has to be done, and ought 
to be done, to do it even though it hurts some students 
and some fathers and mothers. Ordinarily I should 
not consider it a calamity if neither women nor law- 
yers were on such a committee. Women are more 
often than men influenced by their prejudices or their 
emotions, and lawyers are likely to insist upon a 
" legal " conviction. Conditions are such that a man 
should often be allowed to go free who has violated a 
college regulation, while another man who may not 
be proved guilty of any actual dereliction may yet 
clearly be a detriment to the community, and should 
be sent away. 

During the years in which, as chairman of our com- 
mittee on discipline for men, I have had to do with 
discipline at the University of Illinois I have had a 
good many interesting experiences, and have drawn 
from these experiences some pretty definite conclu- 
sions. I have come to realize that a disciplinary 
officer to be successful must have certain personal 
traits of character. He must first of all have the 
confidence of both students and faculty. The faculty 
must feel that matters given into his hands will be 
dealt with squarely and without delay. No college 
instructor wishes to be humiliated by having matters 
of discipline which he reports either ignored or 
treated lightly. Neither should he feel that he is 
compromised, if not every student whom he reports 
for discipline is found guilty. Some instructors 
whom I have known are as sensitive upon this topic 
as aeolian harps. I know more than one who re- 



DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 11 

fuses to report cases of alleged cribbing, because of 
the fact that a student previously reported was not 
proved guilty by the disciplinary committee. It was 
not justice they desired but conviction. 

No disciplinary officer will get on well unless he 
has a reputation for playing fair. If the college 
officer is willing to give the square deal, he will have 
gone a long way toward solving his official difficulties. 
He will sometimes have to listen to some long stories, 
he will have to bury his prejudices against races 
and individuals, he will, perhaps, often have to go 
a long way and suffer some inconveniences to discover 
necessary facts, but, when the college officer was able 
to show them that he desired to do the fair thing, 
the college students I have known have for the most 
part been square, and have been willing to take with- 
out complaint or whimpering what was legitimately 
coming to them for their misdeeds. 

The college students I have known will use all 
sorts of subterfuge to shield a fellow student, but 
they will usually tell the truth about themselves. 
There are always two sides to a story, and it is never 
wise to reach a conclusion until both of these have 
been heard. No matter how damaging or convincing 
the evidence may be with regard to any question 
under dispute, it is best to hold one's judgment in 
abeyance until the accused party has been heard and 
given a. chance to defend himself. Only a few days 
ago a woman called me on the telephone to settle a 
dispute with reference to an alleged agreement which 
she had had with a student. " Should not a student 
who has rented a room for a semester, and who leaves 
before the end of his contract, pay for the whole 



12 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

semester ? " she asked. " Ordinarily, yes," I replied, 
" but I should like to talk to the student before an- 
swering." When I did so, I found that in reality 
the woman had violated her contract, but wanted still 
to hold the student to his. 

One of the things that has impressed me most 
in the pretty wide experience which I have- had with 
college discipline is that no two cases are alike, be- 
cause no two men are alike. There is always some- 
thing new coming up — new character, a new view- 
point, new conditions, a new view of temptation and 
weakness. The work can never become mechanical 
because of its infinite variety. One might think, if 
he did not know, that, having seen fifty men during 
a year on fifty different sorts of wrongdoing, there 
would be nothing new, and that the next years would 
be a repetition of the old stories, but it is not true. 
Every case of discipline which I have had to do with 
was a special case. I have found, too, that women 
up for discipline are not at all like men. I have not 
for years had any direct connection with the discipline 
of women, that work being done by a committee of 
women, as I think it best perhaps that it should be. 
The experience which I did have, hoM'-ever, led me to 
the conclusion that they are less frank than men, 
less likely to tell the truth if they have done wrong 
than men are, because they are more nervous, more 
temperamental, and have more to lose, as society is 
now constituted, than men have, if they should be 
detected in wrongdoing. 

I have come to look upon the work of discipline 
in a somewhat different light than I did during the 
iirst few years I had to do with it. At first it took 



DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 13 

all the courage and force of will that I could summon 
to recommend discipline of any sort, and especially 
the dismissal of a student from college. It is no 
small matter to send a young fellow from college in 
disgrace. As time has gone on I have realized more 
clearly the effect of discipline upon the indivdual, 
and I have seen, too, that the parent quite as often 
as the child is at fault, and needs the shock which 
discipline brings. When one sees the fathers he 
often feels like being more lenient with the sons. 

A young fellow who has been detected in a violation 
of college regulations, whether it be a case of cribbing, 
or gambling, or stealing, or whatever it may be, 
almost invariably thinks first of his parents, usually 
of liis mother. I have remarked often, not as a jest, 
but as a matter of fact, that one parent at least, and 
often both, of most of the students with whose dis- 
cipline I have been connected for a good many years 
has been in the most critical physical, mental, or 
financial condition, — a condition which the boy 
thinks will end in a complete breakdown if the par- 
ents hear of the son's disgrace. I have often won- 
dered why such critical situations do not more often 
keep sons within the narrow path. 

" It will break my mother's heart," I am told 
over and over again by boys who think they are utter- 
ing the truth, and though this fact is no logical argu- 
ment if the punishment is deserved, and the good of 
the University community is to be furthered, I have 
come to know that it is not true. " If I am sent 
home," boys say to me, " it will mean that my educa- 
tion is at an end, and that my father will have noth- 
ing to do with me further." I have had fathers and 



14 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

mothers tell me that if their son were dismissed, they 
would disown him, and though this may sometimes 
happen, I have never yet known a parent who, 
when the actual crisis arrived, did not come to the 
support of his- child. A short time ago I thought I 
had found an exception, but the later details proved 
that I was mistaken. A father and mother sat in 
my office and talked to an only son who was about to 
be dismissed for irregularity of conduct. Both said 
to him firmly that if he were sent home, he need 
never appeal to them for help or support; they were 
through with him for all time. He was finally dis- 
missed, but I was interested to learn very shortly 
that he was sent to a neighboring state university, 
and that he was receiving generous monthly allow- 
ances from home. 

I recall another student dismissed for hazing. 
His case appealed to me at the time because of the 
peculiar circumstances at home. His parents were 
both dead, and an older brother with whom, he had 
many difficulties, was his guardian. This added 
trouble the boy thought would estrange them com- 
pletely. I shall not soon forget his downcast an.d 
hopeless face when he came to say good-by to me. A 
year later he told me that his dismissal from college 
was the best thing that had ever happened to him. 
It awakened bim to seriousness of life; and more 
strangely than that it awakened the sympathy of his 
brother and brought them more closely together than 
they had ever before been. He came back to the Uni- 
versity at the end of his period of suspension, a happy 
boy and a serious student, and as I am writing these 
paragraphs, a letter comes to me from him written 



DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 15 

from a western city where he is now a successful busi- 
ness, man, stronger, perhaps, from the experiences 
through which he has gone. 

Another instance is characteristic. When a boy 
is disciplined, his father is, of course, written. A 
young fellow this year disciplined, but not dismissed, 
for some minor divergence from the straight path, 
showed me a letter which he had just received from 
his father relative to the notice which the latter 
had received from me. It was an angry, cruel note, 
written on the impulse when the chagrined and dis- 
appointed parent was smarting under the sting of his 
son's disgrace. In it he said that he was through 
with the boy, who if he wanted any further educa- 
tion must himself earn it. He need not come home, 
he need not ask further for money. The boy was 
stirred and determined to stay in college ; I offered to 
help him, to lend him money until he could get work, 
and suggested that I write his father. It was only a 
few days after I had written until the father came 
to see me. He was ashamed of his letter, but too 
proud to take back his statements at once, but before 
he left me he gave me a sum of money adequate to 
meet his son's expenses until the close of the year, 
which I was to lend to him with the statement that 
it came from a friend who was interested in his 
welfare, and who wanted to help him out. A little 
later the two werfe reconciled, and the story ended 
happily. My first conclusion, therefore, is that what- 
ever happens to a boy, the folks at home can be 
counted on to stand by him. 

My experience has also led me to the conclusion 
that the fellow who violates a college regulation or a 



16 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

moral principle and who is not detected in it, or 
who, though detected, is allowed to go without pen- 
alty, is usually weakened in character by the experi- 
ence' or confirmed in his bad habits. I stumbled upon 
the fact one day, early in my experience as a dis- 
ciplinary officer, that a young fellow just entering 
his junior year was dissipating his energies and 
squandering his time and money by gambling. When 
I called him to the office he was very much agitated 
and begged for " one more chance." It wa;S the old 
story of his "first offense." There was the sick 
mother at home believing in her only son, there was 
the probable ruin of his college career, there were all 
the stage effects which I have since come to recognize, 
and there was the strong assurance that he had 
learned his lesson, and would give up the habit. 
Since no other students were concerned, I accepted 
his word, and dropped the matter. I have since 
learned that he kept up the practice at irregular in- 
tervals through his college course, safe in the feeling 
tliat if he were caught again he could work upon my 
feelings to let him go unpunished. Another case is 
that of a young man caught in the act of cribbing 
in an examination. He seemed very penitent, the 
offense was committed in an environment which made 
the temptation strong, and he gave his word of honor 
that such an offense would not be committed by him 
again. It was not a month before he was again 
detected, and his only excuse was that since his error 
had before been condoned, he thought it would be 
again. The man who escapes punishment, who gets 
away, does not have his tendencies to error inhibited. 
There is for him no deterrent. 



DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 17 

Men ultimately see this fact and admit it. " The 
best thing you ever did for me," one pf our graduates 
said to me not long ago, " was to send me away from 
college a year. I thought at the time that it was 
severe, that it would ruin my chances of finishing 
my course, that it would break off all friendly rela- 
tions between myself and my parents, but it braced 
me up; it gave me the determination to make good; 
it made a man of me." 

I remember one Christmas morning, years ago, 
when a young freshman and his broken, tearful 
mother sat at my fireside trying to gather up the 
fragments of what seemed to them a. ruined life and 
trying to gain courage to face the world. The boy 
had had very meager resources; he had been hard 
pressed not only for the comfortable, pleasure-giving 
things which most boys have, but often even for the 
necessities of life. Opportunity presented itself, and 
he had yielded to the temptation to steal from the 
gymnasium lockers of other students. He had been 
detected, arrested, lodged in jail, and fined. Now 
he was out of college and was going home. It was a 
sad hour we spent together trying to look facts in the 
face and to plan a sane future, and it seemed, some- 
how, a pretty hopeless hour. I urged him to go 
somewhere else and start again, and he promised to 
try. A few years later I received an invitation to 
the Commencement exercises of a reputable western 
college, and within it a card bearing his name. Two 
years ago he came to see me at home-coming time. 
He had done well in college, he was married, and 
he was doing what he could to make the world wiser 
and better as principal of a reputable high school. 



18 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

The discipline of which I had unhapjDily at the time 
been the main cause, he came to thank me for. It 
had been, he said, the turning point in his life ; it had 
stimulated his will and his ambition to overcome 
obstacles. He shook hands with me as we parted 
with tears in his eyes. 

Another case is similar. Various articles had been 
disappearing from the coat rooms at the University 
and from lodging houses about the campus, and I 
began to suspect a young sophomore. He fell into 
a trap that was set for him, admitted his guilt when 
the evidence was presented to him, and was dismissed 
from college. He was a fellow of some prominence, 
and all sorts of efforts were made by his friends to 
have him reinstated. Public officials, relatives, edu- 
cators, and religious workers all did what they could 
to have the penalty set aside, not because the man was 
not guilty, but because of their personal interest in 
him ; but it did not seem best that this should be done. 
I lost track of him for a while, and then one day 
he dropped into my office to tell me that the discipline 
which had seemed so cruel to him at the time had 
proved his greatest blessing. It had aroused him to 
an appreciation of his own moral danger; it had 
caused him to think as he had never done before, and 
it had made him determine to get a college education. 
He had entered another college, had graduated, and 
is now a successful professional man in a growing city 
in Illinois. 

One can not have to do with discipline long with- 
out coming to realize to what lengths the friends of 
students will go to influence college authorities to set 
aside penalties which have been imposed. It is not 



DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 19 

that these friends think the student innocent of the 
charge against him, it is not that they feel that the 
penalty imposed is in general too severe; they simply 
ask for special privilege and special leniency in the 
eases of their friends. They have worked for the in- 
stitution ; it owes them something for this effort, and 
they wish the debt paid through the granting of 
special moral or intellectual indulgences to their 
friends. Public officials of all sorts, business men, 
teachers, and even ministers have written me and 
called upon me to ask for clemency for their friends 
and sometimes almost to demand it as a right. For 
the reason that almost every penalty that is imposed 
will be challenged I have learned that it is wisest 
in imposing a penalty to make it a conservative one 
— one mild enough reasonably to be defended and 
justified, and then to adhere to the conclusion reached. 
It invariably weakens the authority and the confi- 
dence in the judgment of college officials when dis- 
ciplinary penalties are frequently being set aside. 

As a rule the man himself who is disciplined takes 
his punishment without whining; he accepts a just 
penalty, admits his error, and generally comes in to 
say good-by to me and to ask me to write a some- 
what detailed explanatory letter to his mother, to 
give her all the facts and to show her that he is not 
wholly bad. But parents seldom accept the punish- 
ment of their children as just. They have the general 
attitude of a father who talked to me a year or two 
ago concerning an attack by students upon one of 
our local theaters. " When I read the account in 
one of our local papers of the dreadful things those 
students did," he said, " I spoke right out. If I had 



20 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

to deal with those students, I should expel every one 
of them, but when later I saw that my son had been 
caught, I said, ' Why, poor Victor, he is a good boy. 
They surely will not punish Victor/ " He brought 
every sort of influence to bear upon us, and even tried 
to persuade his son to falsify as to the facts ; but 
Victor was guilty, and had to go. The disciplining 
of the parents and friends of students is a far more 
difficult and trying task than meting out justice to 
undergraduates, but it comes in as a part of the day's 
work. 

It has never seemed wise to me to convict a student 
of dishonesty or of any other misdemeanor wholly 
upon circumstantial evidence, no matter how complete 
or convincing the evidence may have been. If it has 
been done we have usually lived to regret it. I should 
rather let a guilty man go than to convict an innocent 
one. Not long ago we had reported from one of 
the courses in civil engineering a case of alleged 
cribbing. The young fellow accused denied all guilt 
and did so in such a straightforward way that I was 
convinced he was telling the truth. He had used in 
one of his answers, and had used it incorrectly, a 
table so long and so complicated that it seemed quite 
impossible that he could have obtained it anywhere 
excepting by consulting a book. The instructor in 
the course felt that it was inconceivable that a man 
before going to a quiz could commit to memory such 
a long list of figures. There were six columns, 
twelve -items in a column, and seven figures in each 
item — a total of five hundred and four digits to be 
remembered in order. We deliberated a long time; 
the student's previous record had not been good, and 



DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 21 

it looked as if he had to be guilty. He protested 
strongly that he had written the table from memory. 
Finally one member of the committee turned to the 
boy. " You say you committed this to memory in the 
belief that you might get it in the examination ? " 
" Yes," he replied, " I can commit almost anything at 
sight." " Do you think you could repeat the table 
now ? " "I believe so," he said hesitatingly. It was 
three weeks since he had had the test, but he dropped 
his head for a moment and then began. " I'll read 
the figures across," and he did so haltingly but surely, 
and in the five hundred and four digits he made an 
error in but two. I think I shall never vote to con- 
vict any one on circumstantial evidence again. 

I have had so many varying experiences with under- 
graduates and their escapades and irregularities that 
I have come often to have a sort of intuition as to 
what has happened as soon as I talk to the student. 
Two instances of this will suflfice to illustrate my 
point. In one of the large laboratories in chemistry 
an instructor became suspicious that certain students 
were collaborating in their experiments, and were 
not performing all of them. It was thought that 
each man was doing a part of them, and that the 
others were working them up from his data, changing 
the data very slightly to avoid suspicion. I called 
the men and talked to each of them alone, as is my 
custom, before bringing them to the committee. 
When the committee saw them their explanations were 
so clear and direct as to when and how they had done 
their experiments that the unanimous recommenda- 
tion was that the case against them be dismissed. A 
night intervened before I could take the recomraenda- 



22 DISCIPLINE AND THE DEEELICT 

tion to our Council for confirmation, as is required 
by our rules, and during this time I had recurring 
to me constantly the feeling that one of the men at 
least was guilty, I held up the recommendation long 
enough to have another interview with him. At this 
interview I said to him that though the members of 
our committee had believed his story and thought 
him innocent, as I had thought over his manner of 
giving his evidence I was convinced that he was 
guilty, that without the other man's knowledge, he 
had had access to his data and had copied his ex- 
periment. My frankness seemed to make an appeal 
to him, and he confessed that my surmises were cor- 
rect. 

One of the merchants near the campus not long 
ago had a number of checks presented to him which 
turned out to be forgeries. The custom of taking 
any one's check is so common with our local mer- 
chants that it is usually impossible to remember who 
passed such checks when finally they are detected. 
As usual he brought these checks — three of them — 
to me, to see what I could make of them. They all 
bore the name of a well known student, but when I 
compared his writing with that of the signature on 
the checks, though there was a similarity, there was 
no doubt that the signatures were forged. It was 
evident to me, however, that the man who had com- 
mitted the forgery had been familiar with the student 
whose signature he had forged, that he knew his sig- 
nature, the name of his bank, and something of the 
amount of money he was accustomed to keep on 
deposit. " Who is your room-mate now ? " I asked the 
man whose bank account had been threatened, " and 



DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 23 

who was your room-mate last year ? " As soon as 
he had named his room-mate of the previous year, I 
was completely convinced that I had found the guilty 
man. I had in fact had an interview with him that 
very morning, and I knew something of the financial 
difficulties he had been in, and I felt strongly the 
weakness and shiftiness of his character. Before 
calling him I got from his English teacher his last 
theme, and I looked up his study list which bore 
his penmanship and his signature. When I com- 
pared these papers with the forged signature I found 
two or three things which interested me. The color 
of the ink was identical in all cases, the form of sev- 
eral letters was the same, and the general slant of 
the letters was similar. 

After I had gone over these things in my own mind 
I called the suspected student and told him the whole 
story. I presented him with the evidence which I 
had, laid the forged signatures and the samples of his 
own writing before him, and said to him quite frankly 
that I thought he had written the forged checks. He 
turned quite white as I was talking; when I had 
finished he dropped his head upon the desk for a 
moment and then looking me in the eye he said, " I 
did do it." I presume that in reality I had little or 
no convincing evidence against him. It was purely 
a matter of knowing the man and feeling that he was 
the guilty one. It is a sort of feeling which it would 
be dangerous to rely upon, and yet it has got me out 
of a corner many and many a time. 

There is much in the experience of a college officer 
as closely connected with discipline as I am to make 
one cynical and to cause him to lose faith in human 



24 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

nature; all that is low and unclean and dishonest in 
students I am daily coming in contact with. Yet I 
am constantly having experiences that show me that 
men are still honest and conscientious and manly. 
One busy day a few years ago I received an urgent 
letter from one of our graduates who had been out 
only a few months asking me to name a time when I 
could see him on an important and private matter. 
The case was urgent, he assured me, and the inter- 
view meant much to him. He came in a day or two 
and told me his story. "When entering the University 
he had transferred from another college. By some 
curious error the registrar of the college from which 
he had transferred had entered upon his record credit 
for a subject which he had never taken. He had let 
the error go without mentioning it, the subject had 
been transferred to his University credits, and he had 
used it toward graduation. The whole mistake had 
arisen through no direct act of his own, and he had 
weakly let it go. The deceit had weighed constantly 
upon his conscience until he could bear it no longer. 
He was quite willing to relinquish his diploma or to 
reenter the University and make up the amount 
which had been falsely credited to him. I thought 
that perhaps there might be some other solution of 
the matter and went over his college credits with 
that hope in mind. I found to my satisfaction that 
by a slight readjustment of his work the surplus 
credits could be discarded, and that he still had credits 
enough honestly earned to meet the requirement for 
graduation. I sent him home happy, and so far as I 
know, he and I are the only ones who know all the 
details of the story. 



DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 25 

Two years ago I had another experience with a 
young fellow caught in a really serious college esca- 
pade, which strengthened materially my faith in 
human nature. It was a situation in which the boy 
knew that if he told tlie truth he would be per- 
manently dismissed from college. I knew all the 
details of the case, but this fact he was not aware 
of. In spite of the penalty which he knew would 
be inflicted, and ignorant of what I already knew 
he told our committee as frank and straightforward 
a story as I have ever heard, and though his father is 
a man of wide influence in the community in which 
he lives, the boy accepted his punishment in a thor- 
oughly manly fashion and left me with the most 
friendly feeling. It gave me the greatest satisfaction 
a few months ago to be able to write him that because 
of his truthfulness and because of the manly way in 
which he had received his punishment, our Council 
had reconsidered its action in the case and would 
allow him to return to the University next fall — an 
action which had been taken in reference to no other 
similar offender in ten years. 

I was walking across the campus one bright spring 
morning not many years ago when I came upon a 
young sophomore sitting on the senior bench. " I 
thought you'd be along soon," he said, " and so I was 
waiting for you." " What can I do for you, Ralph ? " 
I asked. " Well," he answered, " I was drunk la.st 
night, and I had to tell some one; so I thought I'd 
tell you." The sequel doesn't matter so much, I sup- 
pose. I am glad to be convinced daily that there are 
still honest men in college — men who have courage 
to tell the truth even when the truth brings public 



26 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

disgrace to them, men who are willing to confess their 
faults even when such confession means dismissal. 

I seldom lose track of the fellows who for one 
reason or another have been disciplined by the Uni- 
versity. Even if their dismissal is a permanent one 
they write to me, or send me messages, or drift at in- 
tervals in a friendly way across my path. I count 
them among my closest and warmest friends. Only 
this afternoon one of them called me up to ask a few 
words of advice and to make a kindly inquiry about 
my health. There is lying in my basket of un- 
answered correspondence one of the kindest letters I 
ever received from a boy whom I was instrumental in 
sending away from the University. 

There is never a Christmas that I do not hear from 
some of the once derelicts who send me good wishes 
or the baby's picture. It gives me the greatest 
pleasure to know that these men are almost without 
exception doing a man's work in a manly way, and 
that out of their discipline has come for them a real 
strength of character. 



THE BORROWER 

When I used to lie awake at night and try to devise 
means of disposing of the money which I should make 
by writing a book or through my investments in oil 
stock, one of the philanthropic plans which sug- 
gested itself to me most frequently of getting rid of 
my spoils, was to found a loan fund for needy 
students by which boys with ambition and no finan- 
cial backing should be able to borrow money easily 
to complete a college education. I had been desper- 
ately hard up myself as an undergraduate, and I had 
a more than ordinarily sympathetic feeling for others 
in the same situation and a desire to mitigate their 
pain. I know a good deal more about the college 
borrower, however, than T did twenty years ago, and 
though I still believe in college loan funds, I am 
not so sure as T once was that money or an education 
too easily obtained is always highly valued. I have 
found that not all of the young fellows in college who 
are willing to borrow money deserve to be helped, and 
that many who most deserve help are unwilling to 
borrow. I have seen the college borrower in a new 
light. It so happens that my official position has 
given me an unusual opportunity to observe two 
classes of men in college who want to be helped out 
of financial holes : those who have come to me for 
personal and immediate help because I seem good- 
natured and easy, and those who come to me as an 

27 



28 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

official of the University, who for some years has had 
general charge of the University loan funds. I have 
gained the confidence, also, of not a few soft-hearted 
friends who have at one time or another yielded to 
the touch of the indigent undergraduate, and who 
have told me whether they have lived to regret their 
momentary and monetary weakness or to rejoice that 
the chance had heen given them to help a needy and a 
worthy youth. From these two experiences I have 
accumulated a considerable body of experience and 
have formulated generalizations. 

Our loan funds at the University of Illinois are 
safeguarded by numerous regulations and restric- 
tions so that it is not possible for an undergraduate 
who finds himself out of funds in the morning to 
negotiate a loan from his alma mater before evening. 
The prospective borrower must fill out an application 
blank, he must give references, he must, in most 
cases, offer security and must submit the names of 
at least two persons who know him and who are 
acquainted with the individual whose name he offers 
as security for the repayment of his loan. All this 
takes time — sometimes it requires a month for all 
the preliminaries to be gone through, for few people 
answer letters promptly, and some otherwise good 
citizens never answer them at all, and so possibly save 
themselves considerable bother, as do those worthy 
though unprogressive individuals who refuse to in- 
stall a telephone. The borrower who has not made 
his plans sufficiently far ahead of time is sometimes 
annoyed by what he considers unnecessary red tape 
and inexcusable delay. A young fellow called on me 
only a few weeks ago wishing to get help from one 



THE BORROWER 29 

of our loan funds. His monthly check' had not come, 
he had an engagement out of town, he needed thirty 
dollars immediately, and he wanted to catch the after- 
noon train. Wlien I explained to him that our loan 
funds were not primarily to relieve such cases of 
distress as he presented, but even if we should be 
willing to make a loan to him it would take at least 
two weeks and possibly a month to get it approved, 
he was quite disgusted, and went out of my office 
muttering anathemas against the system. 

The undergraduate who borrows money is usually 
inexperienced in financial matters. He has estab- 
lished nothing that resembles credit, he is ignorant 
of all such things as interest and security and dis- 
count except as he may have come into contact with 
the terms while pursuing the study of arithmetic in 
the grades. He has seldom signed a promissory note 
before, and he usually signs this first one, unless 
some one insists otherwise, without reading it. He 
is told, perhaps, that the note bears five per cent, 
interest from date and tliat it will fall due in two 
years and eight months. This fact, however, is not 
likely to make any serious impression upon his mind 
excepting that it seems a sufficiently safe distance 
in the future to cause him no immediate uneasiness or 
worry. I have never known more than a half dozen 
student borrowers who got the date of the maturity 
of their note so definitely in mind as to be sure of it 
without a notification from the bursar. It is true 
that all of our regulations and requirements are down 
in black and white and are given to every student to 
be read when he applies for a loan, and though he 
affirms when he makes application for his loan that 



30 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

he has read these regulations, and though I have no 
doubt he goes over thera, they seldom make any last- 
ing impression upon him. 

Most students have the feeling that it should be 
easier in a college town to borrow money not only 
from the college itself, but from private individuals, 
than in any other conmiunity. The contrary of this 
is in fact true, for men with money who live in a 
college town have had more experiences in lending it 
and more opportunities to lend it to undergraduates 
than have other people and have learned something 
from that experience. Every week almost through- 
out the college year some student, down in his finan- 
cial luck, often a man whom I have never seen before 
on his first registration day, comes cheerfully and con- 
fidently into my office and asks, " Could you tell the 
name of some one in town who would lend me some 
money ? " 

" Can you give security ? " I inquire. He sel- 
dom knows what I mean by the term, but when I 
explain I find almost invariably that he can not, so 
that the banks are out of the question. I generally 
explain to such a man that the place for him to get 
money is at home where he has friends, where people 
know him, and where, if he has lived a steady, depend- 
able life, there are no doubt those who would be 
willing to trust him ; but he generally leaves me dis- 
contented and disappointed. 

I am surprised often, too, at the optimism of many 
of those who wish to borrow. Fellows who have not 
been able to save anything in the past are eager to 
tax the future, confidently expecting that what has 
proved impossible this year will offer no difficulties 



THE BORROWER 31 

next. A man came into my office last fall and said 
that lie would like very much to enter college. He, 
however, had no money and his entrance was de- 
pendent entirely upon his ability to borrow a sum 
sufficient to carry him through the year. He was 
not young — was in fact, I discovered by inquiry, 
twenty-eight years of age. He had been out of high 
school eight years, had had a fair position during all 
that time, was without responsibilities excepting to 
take care of himself, but he had not saved a cent; 
he did not have enough money to pay our matricu- 
lation and incidental fees, which are in reality trifling. 

I told him that it would be impossible for the Uni- 
versity to lend him money, because it now has a 
regulation that no loans are available to students 
until they have been in residence for at least one 
year, but I went further to show him that if he had 
only himself to support, and had held a good position 
for so many years without saving a little money at 
least, so far as any loan was concerned he was what 
I should call a pretty poor bet. Any individual or 
institution would be doing a foolish thing if it lent 
him money with the idea that it would within any 
reasonable time be paid back. 

The man who does not look ahead before he enters 
upon any enterprise to determine bow he is going 
to complete what he has undertaken, as well as the 
undergraduate who enters upon the work of a year 
in college without having determined upon some way 
in which he may be able to meet his expenses, is 
ordinarily a poor risk. If he borrows money he will 
be quite as unlikely to make definite plans to pay it 
back and will come up to the time of the maturity of 



32 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

his note with hardly more than enough money to pay 
the interest. It is the fellow who applies early for 
his loan, who makes his plans a reasonable time ahead, 
who usually proves to be the best risk. A man who 
goes into debt should have in mind at least two 
reasonable ways for meeting his obligation, so that 
if one failed the other might prove dependable, just 
as a boy pursued by an angry bull in a pasture should 
be able to figure, as he flees to safety, that if he is 
unable to climb over the fence he may dodge under. 
He should take into consideration, also, the fact that 
it is the unexpected usually that happens. The fel- 
low who never had an accident in his life, and who, 
therefore, considers it unnecessary to carry accident 
insurance is often the first to slip on the stairway and 
break a couple of ribs. The man who borrows should 
take into account the ordinary accidents and unex- 
pected exigencies of life, but it is rarely that he does 
do so. 

The granting of loans from the funds which I 
have to do with is usually restricted to students of 
good or excellent scholarship. In presenting to the 
University the money for establishing one of our 
funds, the donor said specifically : 

" I do not wish loans to be granted from this 
fund to students simply because they are ambitious 
and needy. I feel that a great University should give 
special aid only to those men and women who show 
distinct promise of intellectual power and success." 
It is true, however, that many an undergraduate 
while having to work for his living in college seems 
intellectually commonplace, but if through a loan 
he is permitted to give all of his time to his work, 



THE BORROWER 33 

he shows at once a marked increase in intellectual 
power. I have not, however, found that the scholas- 
tic standing of a student is in any dependable way 
an index of whether or not he will show promptness 
in the repayment of a loan. As often as not the 
dullard is as conscientious in meeting his financial 
obligations as is the high brow. 

One significant fact has shown itself in the col- 
lecting of loans due the University. We have three 
principal loan funds. From one of these the loan is 
made to the individual student upon his own personal 
note without endorsement by a second person. Notes 
drawn upon each of the other two funds require se- 
curity. No insistence has been made that these last 
notes be bankable, but only that a second person who 
has been recommended as honest and reliable sign 
them. Even when these notes are not paid when due 
there is seldom an attempt made to collect from the 
security. In but one instance, so far as I now re- 
member, during the twenty years tliat the funds have 
been available has an endorser of a note been required 
to pay. It is a fact, nevertheless, that the notes that 
bear an endorsement are met with much greater 
promptness and regularity than are the other notes. 
It is not an exaggeration, I believe, to say that the 
unendorsed notes run twice as long, before they are 
finally met, as do those which bear an endorsement. 
The man who gives only his personal note feels s-afer, 
knows usually that a collection could with difficulty 
be forced, and so feels justified in taking his time. 

A few years ago a wealthy friend of education 
offered to present to the University five-hundred dol- 
lars a year to be given to guch needy students as the 



34 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

University might designate and in such sums as might 
be determined. This was done for one year, but the 
effect upon the men themselves was to my mind not a 
good one; they were not stimulated by it, their self- 
respect and self-reliance were not strengthened. I 
therefore wrote the trustee of the fund suggesting 
that the amount which he should put at our disposal 
be lent to students, rather than given to them, at a 
low rate of interest for a reasonable period of time 
and upon its repayment that it be used to increase 
the fund available. This was done, and the effect in 
my opinion has been much more salutary. What we 
get for nothing we seldom value. 

The time set for the repayment of the loans, which 
I am discussing, is two years following the date of 
the borrower's regular or expected graduation. It 
has been interesting if disappointing to me to find 
that only a very small percentage of the loans are 
paid within that time; if they were, the University 
Avould each year have at its disposal nearly twice as 
much money available for loans as it now has. The 
time the notes actually run, I have no doubt, if the 
matter were investigated, is fully twice as long as that 
agreed upon. Most of the loans are ultimately paid, 
for however careless he may be and however long 
he may delay the liquidation of his debt, the college 
borrower is innately honest and at least means well. 

There are exceptions to this last statement of 
course, one of which I recall. I met an old college 
acquaintance of mine a few months ago. He had 
been graduated twenty-five years or more, and though 
he had not made any marked success in his profes- 
sion, yet he was in comfortable circumstances and 



THE BORROWER 35 

without a family depending upon him. He was re- 
calling old friends and old experiences. 

" You know the President lent me two hundred 
and fifty dollars in my junior year," he said. " I 
suppose the debt's outlawed long ago." 

" Haven't you paid it ? " I asked him in astonish- 
ment. 

" No," he replied quite nonchalantly. " He never 
pushed me, and so I just let it go. He's dead now, 
anyway." 

There was no suggestion in his tone of obligation 
or gratitude or shame for having treated a friend 
badly; and the kindly old man who had done him 
the service had lived a life of sacrifice and died in 
comparative poverty, no one knowing how much of 
his savings had gone with the two hundred and fifty 
dollars which my college acquaintance referred to. 

The actual reasons why the college borrower does 
not pay are usually the reasons of youth, for youth is 
optimistic, the future always looks bright ; to-morrow 
is to be a more successful day than to-day has been. 
There is no coefficient of error introduced into his 
calculations for the future, and he seldom if ever 
prepares for the worst or for the unexpected. 

Some men are thoughtless, careless, and indiffer- 
ent. Having made an obligation, the fact passes 
out of their mind entirely until their attention is 
called to it. Under these circumstances they are 
quite unlikely to be in any position to meet the obliga- 
tion because they have not prepared to do so. 

Some, naturally, have ill-luck. Their wages when 
they get to work are lower than they anticipated; ill- 
ness overtakes them, and a hospital bill, and a doctor's 



36 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

bill have to be paid; unforeseen calamities arise in 
their immediate families^ for which they were not 
prepared, and for which they were not responsible. 
All these things must be taken for granted, and 
expected, but they do not indicate the usual nor the 
normal condition of affairs. 

Other graduates fall into situations at once in 
which unusual opportunities for investment present 
themselves. They are thereupon loath to use their 
money for the payment of a debt which seems to many 
of them, now that the money has been spent, very 
much like putting their earnings into a dead horse. 
'•' I could have paid the loan a long time ago," one 
man frankly wrote me, " but I could get money no- 
where else at so low a rate of interest, and my invest- 
ments were bringing me so much more than this that 
I could hardly be expected to withdraw them just 
as I was getting a financial start to pay this debt. 
The University can afford to lose better than I 
can." 

A few men take advantage of any chance to evade 
payment. I am reminded of one of these whom I 
had personally helped. He was not eligible for one 
of our regular loans. He was down financially, had 
a chance to get a good job in a distant city, but had 
no money to pay his transportation. I came to the 
rescue and took his personal note for the thirty-five 
dollars required to carry him to his destination. 
When I wrote him a year later suggesting payment 
of the sum borrowed, he replied that it was at that 
time inconvenient for him to pay ; besides, he added, 
the debt was uncollectible since he was not of legal 
age when he signed the note. He was, therefore, 



THE BORROWER 37 

he alleged, at liberty to pay when and if he pleased. 
There are not many like him, thank heaven. 

It is a curious coincidence that of the eight men 
whose loans from one of our funds are longest over- 
due seven are lawyers. Perhaps their knowledge of 
the law has helped them in the evasion or the neglect 
of their obligations. It will at once be said by some 
one that the explanation of the phenomenon lies in 
the fact that lawyers are long in getting established, 
and that these men are not making enough money to 
meet their obligations, that they must spend what 
they make in order to keep up a respectable appear- 
ance. This is a good explanation, but in this case it 
is not the correct one. Of the ten lawyers whom I 
have repeatedly written concerning overdue accounts 
only one has replied ; no one has paid, though all 
are quite able to pay. 

A great many fail to meet their obligations on 
time because they plan to pay in one sum what they 
have borrowed. Almost every one who goes out from 
college could, from the very beginning spare five or 
ten or fifteen dollars a month from his salary and so 
gradually reduce his debt ; but when it comes to hav- 
ing at hand two hundred or three hundred or five 
hundred dollars, the situation becomes more compli- 
cated if not impossible. There are too many tempta- 
tions surrounding the man just out of college tending 
to separate him from his money to make it likely that 
he will have available at one time the total sum of 
his indebtedness. If he begins by making monthly 
payments he will be surprised how quickly the debt 
will be cancelled without any apparent embarrassment 
to himself. 



38 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

But the excuses already given explain only a small 
percentage of the cases where notes are not met at 
the time of maturity. Far and away the largest 
number of graduates who fail to meet their notes 
when they become due give matrimony as the only 
excuse. Whether the self-supporting student who 
must borrow while he is in college is after he gradu- 
ates less experienced in the affairs of the heart or 
more sentimental than the average, it is a fact that he 
is the first to gather his family gods under his own 
roof-tree, and, ignoring or forgetting his former 
obligations, to take to himself a wife. It has be- 
come quite a habit with me now, when a former 
student does not pay his loan when it becomes due, 
to suppose that he has married, or knowing that 
he has married and , that his regular monthly pay- 
ments have ceased, to surmise that his family has 
increased in size, and my supposition is nearly always 
correct. 

A few years ago I found in the morning mail an 
appealing letter from a former undergraduate. He 
had been out of work for some time until all his 
funds had gone. Now, however, he had found a good 
job. His only trouble was that he did not have at 
hand, nor could he get, sufficient money to meet the 
most simple living expenses until he should obtain his 
first month's pay. Would I not, remembering our 
former friendship, let him have twenty-five dollars 
until pay day, and thus virtually save his life? I 
sent him a check for the amount asked for, but did 
not hear from him for months. I wrote him two or 
three times, but even my letters brought me no re- 
sponse. Then one day when I was in the city I called 



THE BORROWER 39 

him up on the telephone and inquired courteously 
why I had not heard from him. He seemed reluctant 
at first to give me any definite explanation, assured 
me that it had been his specific intention to write 
me that very day, and, finally, when pressed admitted 
that he married immediately following the receipt of 
my check and added that I, being married myself, 
could well understand that the necessity of buying 
furniture and establishing a home left hiiu no sur- 
plus to meet obligations previously incurred. I un- 
derstood perfectly. Incidentally I have not yet re- 
ceived my money, though I have had a postal card 
picture of the new baby and a brief line from father 
indicating that he expected soon to send me a remit- 
tance. 

A few quotations from those who have assumed 
later matrimonial obligations will illustrate the ex- 
cuses I receive for delayed payments: "My wife's 
hospital bill has added an extra burden during the 
last year," one man writes ; " I am to be married in 
December," says another, " and do not find myself 
financially where I expected." " In September after 
my graduation," moans a third, " I was married, and 
my salary was reduced to a living wage. I, therefore, 
find it impossible," etc. 

Here are a few more : " To be frank with you, I 
have had money enough to pay the loan at two dif- 
ferent times, but six months ago I took the best girl 
in the world in wedlock." " If you ever began life 
on a small salary, with some indebtedness, in a city 
where the cost of living is high, you would appreci- 
ate," etc. " My expenditures are those of a married 
man with one child." 



40 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

Matrimony seems to be thought an adequate excuse 
for all sorts of financial delinquencies, since fully sev- 
enty-five per cent of those students who have availed 
themselves of the advantages of our loan funds in the 
past, find it the only excuse they have to offer for 
not meeting their obligations on time. So often is 
the excuse given that I have recently had inserted in 
the application blank which students fill out when 
asking for a loan, this question, " Do you contem- 
plate marrying soon ? " In all this that I have re- 
lated something seems to me wrong. Is it our sys- 
tem, or our teaching, or is it that the student who 
makes the loan has an inadequate conception of his 
obligation, or does marriage like war constitute an 
adequate and legitimate excuse for a man's not meet- 
ing his financial obligations promptly? 

There is another class of borrower, however, in col- 
lege whom most undergraduates who have soft hearts 
and easy purse strings, and whom all college officials 
are acquainted with. These men are those who do 
not wish to take advantage of the more formal meth- 
ods of obtaining help through the regular loan funds 
established by the institution, but who are only tem- 
porarily insolvent and who are expecting checks on 
the next mail or legacies at the convening of the next 
term of court. I had a man ask me for a loan once 
who had an aged grandfather upon whose death he 
was expecting rather generous returns. I had the 
strength of character to refuse the request, and 
though that was years ago, at last reports grandfather 
was as hale and hearty as ever. 

These men seldom want a great deal, but they want 
it at once to meet the pressing obligation or to catch 



THE BORROWER 41 

the waiting car. I think I have not, more than or- 
dinar}^ men, found it difficult to resist their plausible 
arguments, but my experience with them has been 
varied and interesting. They are the harder to resist 
because their plea is so reasonable and their need so 
urgent. I have done business in one way or another 
with a good many of them within the last twenty 
years, and though the most of them have paid, so far 
as I now remember, only six have strictly kept their 
agreements. Until a week ago it was only five, but 
last week a man to whom I had lent thirty dollars, 
paid me three days before he had agreed to do so 
and surprised and almost shocked me by adding 
twenty-five cents for interest. 

" Do you know where La Rue is now and what he is 
doing ? " one of my faculty friends asked me the other 
day. 

" He's married and has a good job in Peoria," I 
replied." Why do you ask ? " 

" Well, he borrowed a hundred dollars from me just 
before he graduated with the understanding that it 
was to be paid within a few months, and I've not seen 
hide nor hair of him since. If he were hard up I did 
not want to press him, but if he is able to pay I 
thought I might as well have the money as he." 

Few weeks go by that I am not approached by stu- 
dents with the request that I endorse a note for them 
at the bank in order that they may make a short time 
loan. In my younger and less experienced days I 
used occasionally to do this when I thought I knew 
my man, but after I had paid a few of these notes at 
times which were often annoyingly inconvenient to 
me, I came to the conclusion that I should under no 



42 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

circumstances endorse a note for a student or any one 
else for that matter. If I had the money and felt so 
inclined I might let him have it, and if I did do this 
it would be with no idea of being able to count on its 
return at the time he agreed to do it. If he did pay 
it when he agreed to, it was just like finding it ; if he 
did not I was not surprised. I felt always in such a 
case as Josh Billings in his beatitude " Blessed are 
they who expect nothing, for they shall not be dis- 
appointed ! " 

An experience of this sort was mine only a few 
months ago. A young fellow whom I knew very 
slightly presented himself at my desk with a promis- 
sory note in his hand for forty dollars all filled out 
and ready for my signature. 

" I can't do it. Mack," I said, " I'm sorry, but I've 
paid my share of that sort of note, and I've sworn 
off." 

" You wouldn't have to pay this one," he assured 
me. 

" That's what they all said," I continued, " and I 
have no doubt they honestly meant it." He seemed 
so disappointed and in so difficult a place that I was 
rather sorry for him. " If I should sign the note," I 
asked him, "how would you meet it? Where is the 
money coming from ? " 

" I have a pretty generous allowance," he ex- 
plained, " and I am sure I could easily pay ten dol- 
lars a month out of it if I could get this money, and 
I surely do need it very seriously." I hesitated a 
moment and then said, 

" I'll lend you the money myself and take your note 
for six months. That ought to give you plenty of 



THE BORROWER 43 

time." I gave him the money, took his note, ana ne 
left me. I did not see him again until after the end 
of the six months and then only because I sent for 
him. When he came at my call he paid a part of his 
indebtedness, made no explanation of his delay, prom- 
ised to pay the rest within a few days, and passed on. 
That is the last time I have seen him. Well, per- 
haps it all went in a good cause, for Mack joined the 
army and fought for his country. My experience 
with him, however, is typical and characteristic. 

Some one who reads this article may say that I am 
over-pessimistic, that my faith in the honesty and 
promptness of the undergraduate is weak, and that 
any inference drawn from the facts and incidents 
presented herein would tend to discourage any one 
who might have a tendency to help the needy under- 
graduate in college. I hope that this is not true. 
N"o one can surpass me in the confidence and faith 
I have in the college man. I think he will meet his 
obligations, but I think because of his youth and in- 
experience that he will seldom do so within the time 
that he first sets for himself ; and if he can not do so 
he will seldom make any explanation or offer any ex- 
cuse. He argues that if he can not pay, it does no 
good just to say so. 

I believe, on the whole, that those men who have 
given money to aid needy students more readily to 
finish their college course have done well — better 
even sometimes than do those who endow libraries, or 
who erect fine buildings for educational purposes, be- 
cause those who aid the self-supporting student are 
equipping men more quickly, and directly for life. 
Those, too, who might otherwise be developed into 



44 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

broad-minded, cultivated students, if they have to 
give all their time to earning a living, are often kept 
narrow and inefficient by the hard, cruel grind. If 
I were to come to the aid of the borrower in college 
I should do so with my eyes open, I should face 
the actual facts which experience with these things 
had taught me, and I should surround the granting of 
these loans with such restrictions as would make them 
comparatively safe risks. 

Of course if the terms upon which loans are 
granted by the college are so rigid as to make it next 
to impossible for the needy undergraduate to meet 
them, the whole purpose of the loan is defeated. If 
the student must meet the conditions which a bank 
imposes then, barring the fact that the college loan 
is usually made at a somewhat lower rate of interest 
than one must pay at the bank, the borrower might 
quite as well patronize his local bank. I should not 
make such loans prohibitive, but I should grant them 
only after a careful investigation and study of the 
character and need of the prospective borrower; for 
after all the main safeguard in making such a loan 
is the personal character of the individual who is re- 
ceiving the loan. 

I should very seldom lend money to students under 
the junior year. If the under classman must begin to 
borrow he is likely so heavily to handicap himself 
with debt at the very beginning of his college course 
that he grows discouraged, gives up the task, and 
never graduates. He is too young usually to realize 
the meaning of debt. Since such a man seldom 
graduates, he, therefore, does not fit himself for rapid 
advancement in any line of work which he may take 



THE BORROWER 45 

up, and he finds it difficult to save enough money be- 
yond his living expenses to meet any considerable 
debt. The man who does not begin to borrow before 
his junior or his senior year can usually see the end 
not far away, and he struggles on to the finish. If 
he does not immediately marry he stands a good 
chance of shortly paying up his obligation. 

I believe in a young man's marrying early, but or- 
dinarily I think he should not do so while he is in 
debt. It is not so cheap for two to live as one and 
never has been, and the young fellow who takes a wife 
faces the probability of doctor bills, of increasing 
family, and of irregular employment, and these con- 
ditions are not conducive to the payment of old debts. 
For this reason, just stated, I have usually hesitated 
to recommend a loan to any applicant when it seemed 
likely that he would marry before his debt was fully 
paid. 

The loan most easily obtained is usually the one 
least appreciated and least likely to be repaid. I be- 
lieve it is a good thing for the student who wishes to 
avail himself of the privileges of a college fund to be 
required to offer some security. Life insurance is a 
protection in case of the borrower's death, but any one 
who has lived twenty years or more should not find it 
impossible to secure an endorser of his note, a mem- 
ber of his family or a friend, who at least has the rep- 
utation for honesty even if he is not to any large ex- 
ten a property holder. The fact that two names are 
on a note shows that there is some one who is willing 
to vouch for the borrower's honesty. There is a cer- 
tain responsibility upon the student, also, to make 
good, to meet his obligation, and to justify himself 



46 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

in the eyes of tlie man who trusted him sufficiently to 
put his name to a note. I used to feel otherwise, but 
an experience with hundreds of borrowers has 
changed my viewpoint entirely. 

A student should seldom borrow, during any year, 
more than half the amount necessary to meet his col- 
lege expenses. He should have saved something from 
his work during the summer vacation, and if he can 
get no help from home, he can always find leisure 
time which can be profitably utilized in adding to 
his income and the use of which for this purpose need 
not interfere either with his pleasure or his studies. 
A small debt is often an incentive to the man just out 
of college to work hard and save his money, but a 
heavy one is likely to take most of the joy out of life, 
and to discourage the debtor utterly. 

Whether loans should be made to students with 
high scholastic standing only, depends upon whether 
one is interested mainly in scholarship or in citizen- 
ship, and though I should thinlc it unwise to put 
much money into the intellectual development of the 
dullard, I should never confine my beneficences to 
high-grade students only. The average man is for 
purposes of citizenship quite worth while, and quite 
worthy of any help which may be bestowed upon him. 

I should still like some day to found a loan fund 
for needy students, but I should not be willing to 
lend to every one who asks, or even to every one who 
is in real need. Sometimes the eager borrower is 
lazy; he is not willing to work as he might to keep 
himself in funds. Sometimes he is inefficient and 
lacking in initiative, so that he has not been able to 
avail himself of opportunities for other sorts of help 



THE BORROWER 47 

which were at hand. Sometimes he has not lived 
within his means and wishes to borrow only that he 
mav live more extravagantly than he should. I 
should not want to lend to any of these, nor should 
I make it too easy even for the best of fellows to 
get a loan. 

It is a good policy for the upperclassman who is 
hard up, if he has a definite purpose before him and 
an average mind and body, to borrow money to get 
him over the last hard pull of the senior year. I 
have always been sorry that I did not myself borrow 
more. Had I done so I could have accomplished 
more during my last year. But the man who bor- 
rows should really be a man who takes his obliga- 
tions seriously, who meets them promptly, who, when 
he gives his word, keeps it. 



THE UNDERGRADUATE AND 
GRAFT 

One spring morning not long ago when I came to 
my office to begin the work of the day I found, as it 
is quite common to do, a young man waiting to see 
me. He was flushed and embarrassed as he entered 
my private oflBce, and he asked me if I would consider 
what he should tell me in the interview which was to 
follow as entirely confidential. He begged that what- 
ever facts and names he might divulge to me should 
be held strictly between ourselves. I gave him my 
assurance, and he continued with his story. He was 
the manager of an important undergraduate enter- 
prise which necessitated his handling during the year 
some thousands of dollars. One of his duties at the 
outset had been to make a contract for supplies for 
the year. A friend of his, an upper classman, had 
come to him in the fall and had presented a proposi- 
tion by which each was to receive a bonus of one hun- 
dred dollars in cash, if the contract should go to a 
definite local firm. He weakly and thoughtlessly 
yielded, hoping to get out of it or in some way to jus- 
tify his action to himself, and now the contract had 
been fulfilled, and his friend was urging him to col- 
lect and divide the bonus. 

" I have never consciously done a dishonest thing 
in my life," he said to me, " and I some way can not 
bring myself now to profit in this irregular way. If 
I take the money, I shall feel myself a crook all my 

48 



THE UNDERGRADUATE AND GRAFT 49 

life ; if I tell my friend that I have changed my mind 
and do not think it right that we should take this 
money, he will be sure that I am not playing the 
game fairly with him, that I am Joking, and am in- 
tending to collect the money and use it all for my 
own benefit." 

I suggested to him a way out of the difficulty 
which was quite satisfactory, and he went off relieved 
and resolved for the future to keep in the straight 
path of honesty. His is only one of the many in- 
stances, which come to my attention almost daily in 
a large educational institution, of the business temp- 
tations which beset students, and of the close rela- 
tionships between the undergraduate and graft. 

The unsophisticated is likely to think of the college 
life as a protected, shielded life, a life which one 
spends in the study of books and of nature, afar off 
from the transactions and the temptations of the sor- 
did business world. This may be true under certain 
conditions and in certain institutions, but not in the 
large universities of the Middle West. 

In the simple life of the small college there is lit- 
tle opportunity, in the undergraduate activities as 
they are carried on, for profit or for dishonesty. No 
large amounts of money change hands, and the stu- 
dents who have charge of undergraduate affairs do 
not often have their characters put to the test of hon- 
esty. In my own undergraduate days there were 
fewer than four hundred students in the institution 
in which I was doing my work. There was little 
money coming in from athletics, there was a deficit 
in our class annual, and no one was paid for working 
on the college paper, for the very good reason that it 



50 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

required labor and finesse for the business manager 
to meet the bills for its publication, let alone to pay 
any one for working upon it. We were satisfied to 
gain experience, though if there had been any loose 
money we should no doubt have shared it eagerly. 
Class functions and class invitations and student op- 
eras and plays and publications were either not a part 
of our undergraduate life or else their conduct en- 
tailed such a minor expenditure of money and was 
so simple in its nature that there was no thought or 
possibility of graft. 

In an institution of eight or ten thousand students 
the case is very different. The student publications 
alone of the University of Illinois last year involved 
the letting of contracts and tlie expenditure of money 
to the extent of ninety thousand dollars, and practi- 
cally all of this money was handled by students, and 
much of the profit divided among them. The expen- 
diture of the senior class for their invitations, and 
ball, and breakfast, and class hats, and commence- 
ment caps and gowns would even at the most conserv- 
ative estimate reach ten thousand dollars, and the 
contracts for all of these things were made by stu- 
dents, and the bills paid by students. The amounts 
may seem large, but when it is remembered that the 
number receiving degrees exceeded one thousand, the 
expenditure is very moderate. If one should go into 
it thoughtfully, he would be quite astonished to real- 
ize the thousand and one undergraduate interests 
which require the making of contracts, the collection 
of considerable sums of money often running into 
thousands of dollars, and the payment of bills by in- 
experienced careless undergraduates upon whom there 



THE UNDERGRADUATE AND GRAFT 51 

is little effective check, and who themselves are un- 
likely if allowed to go undirected or unsupervised to 
keep any intelligent or intelligible account of their 
receipts or their expenditures. In any of the Middle 
West state universities the sums of money handled by 
students in the conduct of undergraduate affairs will 
run annually into tens of thousands of dollars. 

The young men who make up the student body of 
any of our Middle West universities when they enter 
college are, many of them, not unfamiliar with the 
ways of the world. They know what it means to 
get or to hold a job through the influence of friends ; 
they may not call it " pull," but it is the same thing 
under another name. They are not inclined to work 
" for their health," and if they do a piece of work, 
even if it be only having their names on a hat com- 
mittee, they can not always see why they should not 
profit by it in some material way. They are strongly 
imbued with the commercial spirit. Much of the 
foolish talk which they have heard about college has 
been mixed with stories of graft in undergraduate 
affairs, and many fellows come to college with the 
idea that if you are anything of a wise guy you can 
pick up money almost anywhere about a college 
campus. 

The editor of the summer edition of our college 
daily was complaining to me not long ago that he was 
having to do most of the work on the paper himself 
this summer, and that it was really more than he 
was able to accomplisli. 

" Haven't you a staff ? " I inquired, with the mem- 
ory of a long published list of names of editors in my 
mind. 



52 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

" Why, yes," was his reply, " but you see they don't 
get anything out of it, and you can't expect a fellow 
to work for nothing these days." It is a significant 
fact that if you ask a young fellow in college now 
to perform any sort of service, the first question he 
is likely to ask is, "What's there in it?" It is the 
slogan of our times which our young men have 
learned at home from the conduct of politics and the 
conduct of business. We are supposed to preach 
higher ideals in coUege, but it is hard to supplant a 
doctrine of selfish personal interest and profit with 
one of altruism. 

The fact that it is becoming more and more popu- 
lar to go to college and that every year, with us at 
least, there is an increasingly larger number of under- 
graduates who must earn their living, has its influ- 
ence, I have no doubt, upon this desire for graft. I 
do not mean to indicate that it is the men who have 
the greatest need for money to meet the daily de- 
mands for food and lodging who are most concerned 
in the illegitimate ways of obtaining money, and to 
whom these temptations come more strongly. Quite 
the contrary in fact; but when one-third of the men 
in college, as is the case with us, are concerned in 
some way in earning the whole or a part of their 
living there is bound to be a good deal of talk cur- 
rent relative to these matters, and when oiie is daily 
rubbing up against men who are bringing in a few 
dollars, it is not strange that one should look about 
him, even though not pressed by want or dire need, in 
an attempt to discover if there is not some easy money 
in reach which he may pick up. If no one were earn- 
ing money, perhaps no one else would want to do so. 



THE UNDERGRADUATE AND GRAFT 53 

but the sight or the rumor of other fellows adding to 
their incomes by steady work or clever financiering 
stimulates cupidity, just as when I go by an ice cream 
refectory and see a few friends sitting in the window 
refreshing themselves with lemon stirs and bostons, 
my thirst rises. 

When Mclntyre came to me this spring and wanted 
me to help him collect a bill of fifty dollars from the 
freshman class for doing work which his office re- 
quired him to do free of charge, I refused. " Why do 
you want this ? " I asked, knowing that Mac got a 
generous check from home every month, " you have 
plenty of money " ; not that that fact would have 
made any difference if he had been entitled to the 
money, but just to see what his reaction would be. 

" Every one else in the house is making some- 
thing," he explained, " and this seemed my chance. 
I can't see why I shouldn't make a little on the side 
even if I do get all I need from home." They were 
all in the game, and Mac didn't want to be on the side 
lines. 

Another thing which, in a state university at least, 
helps to confirm students in their unwillingness to do 
anything unless they are paid for it, is the fact, I be- 
lieve, that the fees which students pay at such an in- 
stitution are so trifling as to be almost negligible. 
They pay little or nothing for instruction ; many of 
their social affairs are in University buildings, their 
athletic sports and games are furnished at the lowest 
possible rate, the University offers them all sorts of 
entertainments free of charge, and pays a man to get 
the indigent a job. Since they get almost everything 
practically free, it is only a short step to the attitude 



54 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

of mind that if one does any general college service, 
or belongs to anything, or is a member of any com- 
mittee there ought to be a generous rake-off. 

With this training and tendency of students which 
I have discussed, vrith so many student enterprises 
so organized that they bring in relatively large sums 
of money, some part of which may legitimately be 
divided among undergraduates, it is not easy to draw 
the line at the point where honest remuneration ends 
and graft begins. An athlete may not take money 
for his services ; if he does he becomes a professional 
ai:id, if his act is discovered, he is barred from the 
team. General college sentiment would not now ap- 
prove an athlete's being paid even indirectly for his 
services. It would seem out of place for a member 
of the glee club to be paid for singing at the regular 
concerts, though he may be a member of a paid choir 
at the same time that he belongs to the club and be 
subject to no comment if the manager presents each 
member of the club from the profits of the concert 
a sweater bearing an embroidered monogram, though 
it would stir up criticism and scandal if they received 
ten dollar gold pieces. The members of a committee 
appointed to choose a class emblem or a class hat 
could not receive salaries for having their names on 
the committee, but they feel entirely virtuous and 
above reproach if they accept a hat or two or a watch 
fob for their work ; in fact they would be- likely to 
suffer a real irritation if they did not receive such 
gratuities. The members of a dance committee get 
free admission to the dance and charge up as legiti- 
mate expenses all their regular personal expenditures 



THE UNDERGRADUATE AND GRAFT 55 

for cabs and candy incident to the party, and these 
things are seldom looked upon as graft. 

In some lines of student endeavor the undergradu- 
ate who manages the business is paid a stipulated sum 
or gets a definitely agreed upon percentage of the 
profits for his work and thought. The managers of 
the glee club and the student opera, and the lecture 
course, accept a bonus and little is thought of it; 
the managers and editors of all our student publica- 
tions receive definite salaries and a share in the extra 
profits of these different publications which is often 
considerable, and they accept this as a right. 

The question as to what constitutes graft and what 
constitutes legitimate payment for real services ren- 
dered, as I said at the outset, is not easy to settle. 
The manager of the glee club has no little responsi- 
bility. He organizes the club, he plans the trips and 
makes all arrangements for the entertainment of the 
members when they are out of town; he looks after 
the contracts for engagements, pays the bills, and 
puts in a tremendous amount of time in getting 
things in order and in keeping them so. If he should 
be paid fifty or one hundred dollars, should this be 
called graft? Again, the undergraduate who has 
charge of the commencement invitations does not al- 
ways have an easy job. He is beset by solicitors, he 
must try to please as many members of the class as 
possible, he has a considerable amount of detail to 
look after, must read some pretty difficult proof (and 
usually does it badly) and be sure that the name of 
every member of the class is on the list. The invita- 
tions must be delivered on time and in exactly the 



56 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

numbers ordered by each individual. Should he get 
a rake-off ? 

Only a few years ago when the representative of a 
well known engraving company in the East was so- 
liciting an order from the chairman of the senior in- 
vitations committee he presented two propositions. 
The invitations — five thousand of them or more — 
would be laid down at the college book store for 
thirty cents each. If a certain paper stock was ac- 
cepted he would pay to the chairman of the commit- 
tee for his trouble one hundred and fifty dollars in 
cash when the order was delivered, or if the chairman 
did not see his way clear to accept this offer — some 
chairmen do not — he would furnish a slightly su- 
perior quality of paper for the same price. There 
would be nothing on record or public about this trans- 
fer of the cash, — he would be handed the bonus in 
cash which was simply to show in a delicate way the 
appreciation of the company for this item of business. 
Was this a legitimate payment for services rendered 
which the young fellow was at liberty to accept with- 
out criticism, or not? 

Our college daily, managed by students, does a 
yearly business of twenty or thirty thousands of dol- 
lars. The annual contract for the printing of this 
paper is let by a board of trustees composed of four 
students and three members of the faculty. A few 
years ago one of the students concerned was ap- 
proached by a representative of one of the firms bid- 
ding for the contract with this proposition. His firm 
would agree to print the paper for a sum as low as 
the lowest bidder who should make application for 
the job; they would also make in every other detail 



THE UNDERGRADUATE AND GRAFT 57 

a contract as favorable to the interests of the paper 
as any other contract offered. If the student con- 
cerned would use his influence and by his so doing 
they should secure the contract, they would hand him 
one hundred dollars in currency. The boy was a 
hard working fellow who was forced to support him- 
self, the firm making him the offer was well qualified 
to carry out such a contract, and there was every 
probability that he could swing the business in their 
direction. So far as he could see he would not dam- 
age the paper nor cause any person inconvenience or 
loss if he should accept the proposition, and the 
money he was to receive would carry him easily 
through one of the hardest financial difficulties he 
had encountered during his undergraduate course. 
If he had taken the money, would he have been guilty 
of dishonesty and graft? 

A former manager of one of our publications was 
approached by a representative of the firm that had 
done work on the publication when the manager re- 
ferred to was in charge. " If you will help us to get 
this next contract," he said, " we shall be glad to pay 
you handsomely as a purely business proposition." 
The work which the firm had done had been second 
class, as the former manager well knew, but he volun- 
teered to take the new manager through the work 
rooms of the interested firm, showed up their good 
points, evaded the weak ones, urged the claims of the 
firm to the new man's consideration and persuaded 
him to give them his contract. For all this he had 
his expenses paid and received in cash an amount of 
money far in excess of what he could have legiti- 
mately earned in four times the time consumed in his 



58 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

endeavor. Was he dishonest, and was the money 
which he accepted graft? 

In giving these illustrations I have advisedly in- 
dicated that in each case the remuneration which 
these fellows accepted or that which was offered them 
was always cash, never a check or a draft, for when 
bills change hands, unless they are marked, there is 
no tangible record and no way for an outsider to run 
the matter down and get hold of it. Each one of 
these firms may say, as in fact most of them have 
said, that there was no such transaction authorized 
by them and nothing of this sort so far as they are 
aware ever occurred. The student, also, if he is un- 
certain as to the integrity of his conduct has no em- 
barrassing legal witness to rise up to trouble him. 
If he is asked about the affair he may have forgotten, 
or he may evade the question entirely. 

For my own part, I am convinced that we should 
be living under a healthier business and social regime 
in college if we could go back to the time when stu- 
dents worked in undergraduate affairs because they 
valued the distinction and the honor of the positions 
which were attainable, and because they were willing 
through such means to gain acquaintanceship and 
experience. There was stronger loyalty then, there 
was a keener college spirit, there was greater develop- 
ment of character, there was better sportsmanship, 
for a fellow is a poor sportsman who can not see his 
way to doing something for the advantage of his col- 
lege or his class or his organization without receiving 
payment for it whether such payment be in green- 
backs or gold watch fobs, whether it comes to him 
through the operation of regular college rules, or by 



THE UNDERGRADUATE AND GRAFT 59 

irregular and hidden processes which he hesitates to 
discuss. We are, however, in most of our colleges 
at least, working under a different system, looking at 
the business of undergraduate affairs from a differ- 
ent viewpoint, and shall have to take things as I find 
them. 

If I may answer my own question as to what really 
constitutes graft in college I should say that it is re- 
ceiving payment or profit without having the proper 
authority or sanction from those who actually pay 
tlie money or are responsible for its disposal ; or with- 
out having rendered an equivalent service. If the 
junior class votes to give fobs to the men who were 
in charge of the Prom, their acceptance of such a gift 
under this definition cannot be considered as graft 
because the class has a right to distribute its own 
money. If, however, the committee votes itself fobs 
without the approval or consent of the class, and buys 
them out of the proceeds of the dance, the case is 
different. The man who was in charge of the senior 
invitations, for example, if he should have accepted 
one hundred dollars might quite legitimately have 
been accused of graft, for no matter under what 
felicitous name the transfer of currency might have 
taken place, no one is foolish enough to think that 
any one was really paying this amount excepting 
those who are paying for the invitations and they 
are doing so without their knowledge or consent. 
The firm that offered such a bonus made itself safe 
by adding an equal or a larger amount to the regular 
selling price of the goods. The fellow who helped 
to land the contract with the firm that had previously 
done a second class business with him, in addition 



60 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

to perpetrating an ordinary common act of dishon- 
esty was also a grafter, for the service which he per- 
formed even if it had been otherwise square was far 
less in proportion than the remuneration he received. 

We have a university regulation to the effect that 
no organization is permitted to hold an entertainment 
with a view to raising money to be divided among 
its members. When the members of our dancing 
clubs, therefore, turn their cash balance into their 
own individual pockets they are receiving profit con- 
trary to authority and are guilty of graft. Some- 
times, perhaps, a practice like this is established so 
gradually and goes on so long that it loses its original 
significance and seems to become a legitimate com- 
mercial enterprise. 

There is another sort of graft which contemplates 
a special privilege or looks for favors through rela- 
tionship or acquaintanceship where a man has given 
little or nothing for what he expects in return. A 
student is sometimes accused of "working a graft" 
when all that is meant is that because of his nearness 
to an individual or his connection with an office or 
an organization he may be receiving favors to which 
he might otherwise not be entitled. If Jones is 
chairman of the Prom Committee, then Brown who 
is his roommate, even though he has done no work 
to merit preferment, expects to fall heir to some sort 
of soft job where the payment will at least equal if 
it does not exceed the labor. Fraternity men in au- 
thority or with appointing power are not at all likely 
to forget the needy or the eager brother when their 
jobs are being partitioned out. If Tom Jones is 
managing the student opera it is to be expected that 



THE UNDERGRADUATE AND GRAFT 61 

a large percentage of the Zete's should be in the cast 
and in other places of emolument and honor; if 
Skinny Bill is in charge of the Mask and Bauble play 
then we are not surprised to find the whole Beta chap- 
ter taking tickets at the door. It is pretty hard when 
some member of the family is holding the bag for 
one not to try to get his fingers at least upon a few 
coins. 

This form of graft does not always put the worst 
or the most incapable men into positions of trust; on 
the contrary the men selected frequently perform 
their tasks admirably, but it is simply another phase 
of the spoils system ; it teaches a bad social principle, 
and is a form of graft detrimental to the best inter- 
ests of the college. It is at best a weakener of the 
character of those who work it. 

" I can not conceive," a senior recently said to me, 
" that any college man would ever fail to vote for a 
brother or for a friend if he were a candidate for 
office." 

" Not even if there were a much better man run- 
ning? " I asked. 

" No fellow under those circumstances would be 
willing to admit that there are any better men," was 
his reply. But it is a rather vicious accompaniment 
of graft that makes it impossible for a man to recog- 
nize merit in any but his friends. 

These things which I have been discussing are en- 
couraged in college by two or three things. If we 
must speak the truth such practices are not at all 
uncommon in the business world, and students know 
it. The representative of one of the best known 
men's furnishing stores in Chicago not long ago ad- 



62 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

vertised his business and attempted to increase his 
trade by handing out half pint bottles of whiskey to 
all thirsty comers. We live in a dry time, so that 
although these little courtesies are not universally 
appealing they do in some satisfy a long felt want. 
I do not suppose the firm whose goods were thus being 
advertised knew the exact methods which were being 
employed by their solicitor, but he was known as one 
of the shrewdest and most successful salesmen on the 
road. A young landscape gardener who has been out 
of college for only a few years told me a short time 
ago that he seldom put in an order for shrubs to 
carry out the work of park planting in which he is 
now engaged without one or more salesmen ofEer- 
ing to split profits with him to get his order. These 
dishonest ways of promoting trade are not unknown 
to many undergraduates, and though they are not 
universal they are far too common to make it easy 
to develop healthy business principles. 

As soon as the undergraduate begins to do business 
in college he finds that competition among local mer- 
chants and other business men is keen and that a 
good percentage of them are out for the business and 
are willing to pay to get it. It is not so strange, 
then, that the young inexperienced student should 
fall a victim to the subtle arguments w.hich over-en- 
thusiastic solicitors and business men are willing to 
present in order to get their orders. " They prac- 
tically all do it in one way or another," the repre- 
sentative of a big business house said to me not long 
ago, " and if one wants to do business, one has to 
come across. It isn't always money, of course, which 
we put up, but it is the equivalent of money." 



THE UNDERGRADUATE AND GRAFT 63 

I should not want to blame this practice entirely 
upon business houses or their representatives. Most 
students are of the opinion that graft is pretty general 
in undergraduate activities and many fellows go out 
for positions with the hope of finding or making op- 
portunity for illegitimate profit. Some men, it is 
true, are surprised when they are offered money to 
let a contract ; some even are incensed ; but there are 
others who by subtle suggestion make it quite evident 
to business firms that they are willing to be bribed, 
and others even more boldly ask at the outset how 
much there will be in it for them personally. A 
local merchant told me recently that the class officer 
who was in charge of the business of letting the con- 
tract for a class hat or cap came to him to ask for a 
bid on the proposition. When the boy had received 
the merchant's bid he said, " You have offered to 
furnish these caps for one dollar and twenty cents 
each. I will give you the contract if you will make 
it one dollar and thirty cents and turn the ten cents 
extra over to me for my trouble." 

" I shall be very glad to do that," was the mer- 
chant's reply, " if your class will so vote or if you will 
have announced to the class beforehand what is being 
done; but otherwise I cannot." The young fellow 
went away to consider the proposition, but he never 
returned, and another firm received the order. 

These practices could be stopped if they could more 
easily be detected ; but very few people take responsi- 
bility in the matter. The students who profit by such 
grafting seldom boast of it or make it a matter of 
talk; those who know of it but who take no active 
part shrug their shoulders and affirm that it is none 



64 DISCIPLINE AND THE DEEELICT 

of their affairs; it may be wrong, but the responsi- 
bility is not upon them to stop it. Merchants or 
business firms who are implicated, most of them far 
away from the campus, of course have nothing to say 
on the subject, and those who are approached and 
who do not want to enter into such irregular nego- 
tiations, ordinarily content themselves with turning 
down the proposition and saying nothing. When 
there is a transfer of cash there is no record of it, no 
witnesses, no checks or drafts or papers of any kind 
to show that the undergraduate has profited. Bills 
are made out in regular order and checks covering 
the total amount of these bills are always forthcom- 
ing, so that on the surface the transaction seems en- 
tirely above board. 

Notwithstanding these facts, however, I feel sure 
that careful supervision by the faculty of the busi- 
ness transactions of student activities would help ma- 
terially to reduce if not in many oases to prevent 
undergraduate graft as it now exists. Much of the 
graft does not come from a definite transfer of cash 
from the representative of a business firm to an un- 
dergraduate manager, though there is considerable of 
this; it comes through thoughtlessness and careless- 
ness on the part of the student. He collects money 
from various sources and gives no receipts; he pays 
bills and does not make a record of them ; he does not 
keep separate the money which belongs to himself 
personally and that which belongs to the committee 
or the organization which he represents; he spends 
money as he is called on to do so, and by the end of 
a week or a month he has no remote idea how his ac- 
counts stand — how much money is his own and how 



THE UNDERGRADUATE AND GRAFT 65 

much is his organization's. This spring I called to 
my oflBce a young senior who had handled the accounts 
of a prominent university organization to insist that 
he make a reckoning. He had kept no records; he 
had taken no receipts nor given any ; he did not know 
whether he had collected fifty dollars or two hundred 
and fifty. He was sure that he had not handled much 
money, though what had come into his keeping he had 
put into his pocket without record and spent as his 
own. The only way in which he could in any sense 
atone for his carelessness, he said, was to meet the 
bills of the organization and if these were presented 
to him he would pay them. I am sure he will always 
feel that he got the worst of the bargain, though it 
is not at all certain that he did not collect consider- 
ably more than the bills amounted to. Such errors 
as this which I have just mentioned are all too com- 
mon; the student falls into them thoughtlessly at 
first, and then finding his affairs in a hopeless mud- 
dle, trusts to providence to get him out. 

Such difficulties could be avoided by requiring all 
undergraduates responsible for the collecting and the 
expending of money to give numbered receipts for 
all money collected and to pay all bills by check on 
this money after it has been deposited in the bank. 
Years ago I learned through dear experience not to 
mix any one else's money with my own. If I were 
a Sunday school treasurer I should carry in a bag 
to the bank on Monday morning the pennies and 
nickels I had collected on Sunday and never let them 
touch the unsanctified coins in my own pocket. 
When all students who handle money for under- 
graduate organizations are required to make a busi- 



66 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

iiess-like report of their receipts and expenditures, 
and have furnished them at a trifling cost the neces- 
sary books and paraphernalia to keep these accounts, 
the graft that arises through carelessness will be re- 
duced to a minimum. Knowing that he will be re- 
quired to make a report the undergraduate will be 
on his guard. If undergraduate graft is to be elim- 
inated or even become the unusual occurrence in col- 
lege life, it will be through the development of pub- 
lic sentiment. We are all of us more than we think 
kept conventional and clean and honest through fear 
of what people will say; we might sometimes be 
tempted to swerve a little from the path of rectitude 
if it were not for the fact that we should be talked 
about or made unpopular or criticized or ostracized 
for our action. We all wish to be approved and 
thought well of. When the undergraduate who works 
a graft is looked upon by his fellow students as is any 
other crook or dishonest man, when his lack of in- 
tegrity instead of making him thought a hero or a 
clever fellow brings him disfavor and unpopularity, 
when the sentiment of the world at large and of the 
college world is against such dishonest dealings and 
all who work them whether they be undergraduates 
or business men, the undergraduate will in large part 
be separated from graft. 



YOUNGEST SONS AND ONLY 
CHILDREN 

My title recalls Tom Crow vividly to my mind. I 
noticed him first shortly after the opening of col- 
lege. He was always late to my lecture, coming in 
heated and perturbed, if he came at all, and stumbling 
awkwardly over the feet of those who had been 
prompt, as he scrambled into his seat in the middle 
of the class room. His hair was usually damp and 
uncombed and his clothing unkempt as if while in 
the swimming pool or on the tennis courts some one 
had suddenly reminded him of his neglected intel- 
lectual obligation and he had hastened to his task 
adjusting his clothing on the way. In point of fact, 
as I learned later on inquiry, this was actually what 
liad happened, for, since Tom had never before done 
any thinking for himself, his roommate had been en- 
gaged to do it for him, and sometimes was tardy in 
his duty. Tom showed himself a poor student; he 
was a likeable loafer who meant to do his work, but 
who could never get at it. He was so poor a student 
that when his mother came to visit him after his 
pretty complete failure at the end of the first semester 
she called on me. 

" Don't be too hard on Tommy," she said. " I've 
always looked after him at home, and this new life is 
pretty nearly too much for him. When he was in 
high school I always used to give him his toast and 

67 



68 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

coffee in bed, and while he was eating I got his bath 
ready and laid out his fresh clothes, and got his 
things in order for him to start to school. He'll 
learn in time if you are patient with him." 

In addition to the fact that it was bad hygiene for 
Tommy to eat before he bathed, it was poor disci- 
pline which his mother subjected him to. He was 
an exaggerated type of the only son whose career in 
college was short because he had been coddled by a 
too loving and a too indulgent mother at home. 

Let me explain at once that though I am not the 
only child, I am the youngest son, and so am writing 
without prejudice and not without experience. As 
a child I had more freedom and more privileges than 
any of my older brothers and sisters had been per- 
mitted to enjoy. I was the normal spoiled child, I 
think, petted by my older sisters and praised and 
coddled by father and mother. I went to school when 
I pleased, and worked when I wished to do so. When 
I was fifteen my father died. 

It is a handicap, I am convinced, to be the only 
child or the youngest son or the son of but one parent. 
A beneficent creator when he wrote the directions for 
running the universe decreed that every normal child 
should have two parents, and I think that either a 
greater or a smaller number than this generally re- 
sults in an ill effect upon the child ; and he intended, 
also, until society made it unpopular, that there 
should be more than one child in every family, in 
order that one might help in the training and the 
education of the others. Sometimes a wise parent 
is able to overcome this handicap for his child ; some- 
times a clever independent child is able to manage 



YOUNGEST SONS AND ONLY CHILDREN 69 

himself or his parent so skillfully as to offset the 
handicap ; but these cases are rare. 

At this point I hear the indignant protesting 
mother saying, " Well, I'm perfectly certain that I 
have not spoiled my boy/' and she launches out into 
a detailed recital of all his virtues and accomplish- 
ments and of the rigidty of her personal regime. I 
have heard the story so often and so vividly presented 
that I could recite it from memory without prompt- 
ing, and sometimes I have been glad to admit that 
it was true. 

" What is the matter with Percy ? " the mother of 
an only child said to me a few days ago. " He works 
hard, he loves his work, but he doesn't get on." 

" He is a spoiled boy," was my reply, " who neither 
loves his work nor works hard. He is a bluffer who 
works upon your sympathies by a recital of his woes 
and endeavors, and the results bring him more money 
and more privileges." She was a loving, indulgent, 
anxious mother who believed everything that her boy 
told her as if it had been gospel, and made adequate 
explanation of every dereliction and irregularity of 
which he was guilty. Her boy had not escaped the 
handicap. 

I was talking to the father of a freshman who had 
failed in his college course completely. The boy 
was intellectually bright, but he had not studied, he 
had not gone to class, and he had fallen into bad 
ways and wasted his time generally. 

"What is the matter with the boy?" the father 
asked. " Why has he failed ? " 

I did not answer for a moment, and then I met his 
inquiry by asking a second question. 



70 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

^' How many children have you ? " 

" He is our only child," was the reply, " and we 
have done everything for him." 

" You have answered your own question," I said. 
" He's your only child, and you've done everything 
for him." There had been nothing the matter with 
the boy ; it was with the father. 

It is true, as I have said, however, that some chil- 
dren escape the handicap of being the youngest or 
the only child or the child of one parent, and for the 
sake of harmony at the outset, we will agree that 
yours is one of these, that he has not been made con- 
ceited by praise nor made selfish by indulgence. It 
is of the others, you will understand, that I am writ- 
ing. 

A college officer who comes into personal contact 
with scores of undergraduate young men every day 
will, as the years go on, have many things suggested 
to him relative to their home and their home influ- 
ences, to their parents and to their ideals. Behind 
these boys he will come to see weak, incapable par- 
ents or hard-working, struggling fathers, and thought- 
ful, wise mothers, and influences that are stronger 
than words. He will come in time unconsciously to 
group these boys according to the characteristics they 
show, to separate, for example, the country boy from 
the city boy, for even the crude city boy has a vulgar 
crudeness all his own that is easily distinguishable 
from the rustic crudeness of the young fellow from 
the country. He will recognize the boy who has done 
right and kept clean from principle, and he will pick 
out the fellow without personal principles who has 



YOUNGEST SONS AND ONLY CHILDREN 71 

played the game safe with the home folks and kept 
out of trouble through policy. 

The undergraduate who has' had his secondary 
training in a military school reveals that fact almost 
invariably the moment he opens the door of a college 
office, by his standing at attention or by his per- 
sistent and recurring use of " Sir " when he speaks 
to a superior officer. If he did not reveal it at this 
point he would be almost sure to do so later by the 
reluctance and irregularity with which he attends his 
college exercises. The trouble with this sort of boy 
is that during his school life he was so completely oc- 
cupied with routine that he had no time to himself 
and no opportunity to learn self-direction. When 
the day came that he should determine for himself 
how his time should be employed, he was helpless. 
The routine had been so rigid that he revolted in the 
opposite direction. Having always had his duty 
mapped out for him, he lacked the strength to do it 
for himself. 

I have come to say that I can usually recognize, 
before he has been in college long, the youngest son 
or the only child, or the child of a single parent, or 
the child who is living at home. Children are in- 
jured by over-attention quite as much as by neglect; 
they may be too well brought up as well as too ill. 
If it is true that the watched pot never boils, it is 
equally true that the coddled child seldom develops 
self-reliance and independence. A good many years 
ago when I was a teacher in an academy a troubled 
mother came to me with her only son. She had wor- 
ried over him, and worked with him, and directed 



72 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

him, and thought and planned for him, and goaded 
him on to his lessons with little avail. He was 
eighteen years of age and was scarcely ready for high 
school. She told me all these distressing details with 
much feeling as he sat by stolidly listening. He 
seemed to me a bright enough boy who was not listen- 
ing to the tale of his intellectual shortcomings for 
the first time. 

" What's the matter with Bob ? " she asked in real 
distress. " Why doesn't he do better ? " 

" Too much mother, I believe," I answered frankly. 
For the first time during the conversation Bob looked 
at me and smiled and winked a knowing eye. 

" You have been working out his problems for him 
during all these years," I continued, " let him do it 
for himself, now. Leave him here, and don't see him 
for six months." 

" I have never been away from him a week in his 
life," she said. " He doesn't know how to take care 
of his clothes, or to look after himself. It would kill 
me to stay away from him that long." 

" It will ruin him if you don't," I said. She was 
after all wanting very much to do the best for her 
boy. She left him, hard as it was, and for the first 
time in his life Bob was thrown upon his own re- 
sponsibility. I need not go into detail. He liked 
the new regime, he did his work, and had his first ex- 
perience in passing his examinations on his own ini- 
tiative. 

The picture is, of course, not always so black a 
one. Three of the undergraduates of my acquaint- 
ance this year who made the most conspicuous suc- 
cess in college, both from the standpoint of the faculty 



YOUNGEST SONS AND ONLY CHILDREN 73 

and of the student body, were either only sons or 
youngest sons. More than this they were living at 
home. They were, however, rather notable exceptions 
which tested the rule. They were strong enough to 
follow their own independent action, and their par- 
ents were wise enough not to ruin them by indul- 
gence. 

The fault of the type of young fellow of whom I 
have been speaking lies in his training. The young- 
est son, in the ordinary Middle West families, at least, 
who send their sons to college, comes into manhood 
at a time in the family history usually, when affairs 
are more prosperous at home than they were when 
the older children were ready for college. The family 
has moved into a new house, mother has more leisure, 
and father has more money to spend. The oldest 
boy when he was in high school may have delivered 
papers, or mowed the lawn in summer and looked 
after the furnace in winter, but now that the family 
is in better circumstances, there is a man to take care 
of these matters and the youngest son has nothing to 
do but to keep up his school work and enjoy himself. 
He has a generous supply of spending money, he 
may even have a motor ear of his own, and there is 
no reason why he should take thought of the 
morrow. 

I was talking to two such boys only the other day 
— pleasant lovable fellows — who have as much 
spending money as would have taken me through 
college. They ride around in a high-powered car, 
they squander money daily on the " movies " and in 
ice cream parlors, and neither one would think of 
mowing the grass on their front lawns if it were as 



74 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

high as their necks. The father of neither one of 
them is rich, but they are developing habits of lazi- 
ness and extravagance, are often unhappy or bored 
because they can find no new pleasure or excitement, 
and though they are bright and clever, they are to- 
tally lacking in independence and initiative. They 
are the true types of the middle class youngest son 
and they will not be in college long until they will 
reveal the fact by indifference and discontent and 
dissipation, possibly, and a shirking of unpleasant 
and diflScult duties. 

Such a child at home soon comes to know how 
much the family exchequer will stand and what priv- 
ileges he can count upon, and a few years of indulg- 
ence will teach him to get all he can. I was talking 
to a father this spring. His only son, a freshman 
in college, had grown tired of his course; it neces- 
sitated work, and he did not enjoy work. To relieve 
himself of this hardship he had run away, but finding 
life as a nomad more difficult than he had supposed 
it would be he had telegraphed his mother for money 
and had come back for a time, but now he was leaving 
college. He was not getting what he wanted, he said. 
I was urging his father to make him stay and finish 
what he had begun ; he needed the discipline, and if 
he left now it was unlikely that he would ever come 
back. 

" Charles will come back to college, I am sure," 
the father said, " any boy who has as good a place 
waiting for him after he graduates as he has will not 
be so foolish as to waste his chances by not getting 
an education." 

" Doesn't he know that you'll give him the money 



YOUNGEST SONS AND ONLY CHILDREN 75 

and the place whether he gets an education or not ? '' 
I asked. 

"Well, I suppose he does," the father admitted, 
and the father was correct. Charles has never done 
anything that he did not like to do, and he never will, 
and father will give the money just the same. 

The mother left with a young boy to bring up is 
likely to take the obligation very seriously. She 
realizes at once what a loss it is to him to be without 
the counsel of his father, and she tries bravely to play 
the part of both father and mother. For fear that 
she will fail in this dual task, she scarcely lets him 
out of her mind or out of her sight night or day. 
The first error which she generally falls into is to 
make his life too easy. There is for him little or 
no sacrifice. If any one is to do without things she 
does it in order that he may have what he wants. 
He must do as the other boys do; he must be sup- 
plied with all the comforts that would have been his 
if his father had lived; she does not like to see him 
do difficult or disagreeable things, especially if she 
can do them herself or hire some one to do them. 
If he wants to take responsibility he is often not al- 
lowed to do so, until he soon comes to the point of 
not offering to take it. " I would rather make sac- 
rifices myself," many a foolish mother says, " than 
to have ray son deprived of the pleasures and oppor- 
tunities to which he has a right." All this can not 
help but weaken the boy and make him selfish and 
thoughtless and extravagant. He comes to feel that 
he is entitled to a good time and that if he wants 
money it is up to his mother to get it for him in some 
way. 



76 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

Last Commencement I met the widowed mother of 
one of the members of our graduating class. She 
was keenly interested in her son's progress, in his 
pleasures, in the fact that he should have gotten out 
of his undergraduate life all that was possible. She 
told me what a sacrifice it had meant to her to send 
him to college and with what self-denial it had been 
possible for her to raise the needed money. She com- 
mented upon the extra cost of this last year, but she 
did not regret one dollar that had made it possible 
for him to have what he wanted. It was easy to see 
from her faded, out-of-date clothes what some of her 
sacrifices had been that had enabled her to send him 
the necessary money. And yet about the campus her 
son had been looked upon as a young fellow of 
wealthy family. He had gone with the fellows who 
spent money freely, he had never stayed away from 
dinners or dances or house parties, because he could 
not afford to go. There had been no hesitating on 
his part when money was concerned. And all the 
time at home his mother was working and pinching 
and denying herself in order that he might live in 
selfishness and luxury, and all the time by this sacri- 
fice she was doing him an irreparable injury for 
which he and the woman he marries will in the future 
have to pay a heavy price. 

In another way these mothers in an unselfish en- 
deavor to do the best for their sons and ,to supply 
the place of the father that is gone, often do them 
harm, and that is by never allowing them to do their 
own thinking, to look out for themselves, to make mis- 
takes and by making them to learn how these mis- 
takes may be corrected. These eager mothers choose 



YOUNGEST SONS AND ONLY CHILDREN 77 

their boy's clothes and companions, and courses of 
study. They map out his future and all but do his 
work for him. They think for him, and smooth out 
the way for him, and leave him no chance to develop 
self-direction or initiative. They get him up in the 
morning, and tell him when to go to bed at night. 
If he has a task to perform, they regularly set him 
to it; if he has duties and obligations he is reminded 
of them before he has an opportunity to rely upon 
his own memory or think out his own plan of pro- 
cedure. He is never allowed to forget to be polite 
or prompt or thoughtful or regular when mother is 
by, and knowing that he will not be, he comes to de- 
pend upon the fact that if there is anything he ought 
to do- mother will remind him of it or call his atten- 
tion to it in plenty time even if it is nothing more 
than speaking to a caller or changing his underwear, 
and so he never learns to depend upon himself or to 
tax his memory with the slightest obligation either 
mental or moral. In her abnormal fear that he will 
omit some duty, tlie over-conscientious mother robs 
her son of the power, when he leaves her, of doing 
any duty. 

A refined, educated mother sat in my ofiBce only 
a few weeks ago. Her only son had failed, and she 
wanted to know why. She had watched over him and 
directed him, and kept him immaculate physically; 
he had wanted nothing that he did not get. He had 
never made a sacrifice. She had petted him and 
loved him and scarcely ever let him get out of her 
sight. He was a good boy, she knew, she said, be- 
fore he came to college. How had it all happened? 
But the facts were that he was not a good boy, and 



78 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

never had been. He had no independence, no prin- 
ciples, no desire to do well. He had talked to me 
very frankly. He had had a few " sprees " while he 
was in high school. " It was pretty hard to get away 
with it/' he said, " for she watched me pretty closely, 
and I did not want to hurt her." His theory was 
that anything is all right if you don't get caught. 
Since he had left home he had been drunk, he was in 
debt, he had contracted a wretched disease, but he 
had no compunctions and little power of resistance. 
He is one of a type of boys spoiled at home. 

In contrast to the illustration just given is one of 
another whom I know. She is a widow and a woman 
of influence and wide acquaintance. This summer 
her only son wanted a position and asked her to go 
to some of her friends who were in business and try 
to get him in with them. She declined to do this 
and showed him that it would be very much more to 
his credit and advantage if he should himself apply 
to people whom neither of them knew and secure a 
place upon his own initiative. It required courage 
and backbone for him to do this, but he was a happier 
and a stronger boy when he came home one night 
with a good job which he had got through no one's 
efforts but his own. 

There is another phase of this error on the part of 
parents, especially on the part of mothers, to teach 
their sons independence and self-reliance and a sense 
of responsibility which is seen in their tendency to 
come to college with their sons in order that they 
may look after the boys and give them their care and 
their supervision. When this action is taken for 
financial reasons, because the family exchequer is low 



YOUNGEST SONS AND ONLY CHILDREN 79 

and a necessary saving of mone}' can be effected by 
all living together I have nothing to say. I feel 
much as I do when a fellow tells me that he has to 
make his living while he is carrying his college work 
— it is a situation which has to be met and should 
be met without grumbling or complaint, but it is not 
one which is ordinarily best for the student. When 
parents come with their sons to college because they 
feel that by so doing the boys will be more healthy, 
more comfortable, or more moral, they are ordinarily 
making a mistake. 

" I want my son at home with me as long as pos- 
sible," a father remarked to me, " I do not like to 
think of his getting out from under his mother's in- 
fluence." He did not realize that no boy who has 
been correctly brought up can get out from under 
the influence of his mother no matter how widely 
they may be separated in time or distance. 

I have never known a young fellow who was re- 
strained in college by having his mother or even by 
having both parents with him if he had any tendency 
to irregularities of character, more than he would have 
been had he been away from home. Subterfuge is 
so easy, explanations flock to his brain, and oppor- 
tunities are infinite for evasion. There is always tlie 
" friend " to fall back upon who wants one to study 
with him or to work up a few experiments. The 
boys who live in town with their parents are the hard- 
est sort to keep any kind of check on, and they seldom 
have the self-reliance that those boys have who are 
away from home and working out their own difficul- 
ties. 

I appreciate the fact that it brings the keenest 



80 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

pleasure to parents, especially to mothers, to make 
these sacrifices, to perform these services, to have 
their children with them and to give them their con- 
stant thought and attention. It requires a wise head 
and a strong will and often real mental suffering to 
keep the hands off. I remember the saying of a well- 
known physician that cuddling was good for a mother 
but harmful for her baby; so experience has taught 
me that this loving, anxious care for youngest sons 
and only children, this indulgence and sacrifice on 
the part of parents, this constant thought and plan- 
ning for their present and for their future no doubt 
develops and strengthens the characters of the par- 
ents but it is seldom good for their sons. 

" What fault do you find with my son ? " a, mother 
asked me a few days ago when we were talking on 
this subject. " Isn't he a credit to me ; has he not 
succeeded ? How have I spoiled him ? " 

I parried her question by saying that she was, per- 
haps, an illustration of the mother who has sensibly 
met all these conditions and who has not robbed her 
son of his independence by doing his thinking for 
him. I knew very well, however, that though he was 
a fellow of excellent intellect who had done his col- 
lege work creditably, he had been over-fastidious and 
ladylike, disliking to soil his hands with hard work. 
He had been made selfish and self-centered. He had 
not succeeded at first ; it was only after years of con- 
tact with shrewd men in a profession that tests men's 
characters for real worth, and which holds up snob- 
bishness and superficiality to derision, it was only 
after he had married a sensible woman who knew how 



YOUNGEST SONS AND ONLY CHILDREN 81 

to stimulate him to his best endeavor, that he showed 
that there was really good stuff in him. 

Such boys as I have been discussing are not always 
failures in college; on the contrary they not infre- 
quently get high grades and do the routine work of 
college excellently, but their training almost always 
shows in their characters. They are too often selfish 
and extravagant ; they are on the look-out for conces- 
sions and special favors ; they want a longer vacation 
than other students in order that they may satisfy 
special desires. They have been so used to special 
consideration all their lives tliat they are unable to 
understand why they can not receive it when they 
get to college. 

" I ought not to spend so much money as I do," an 
undergraduate confessed to me recently, " mother 
can't afford it; she is making sacrifices for me con- 
stantly. She does her own work and takes care of 
the furnace, and gives up most of the pleasures she 
would enjoy, simply that I may have a generous al- 
lowance. She is always sending me boxes of things 
to eat, and entertaining my friends, and looking out 
for my comfort, and I selfishly let her do it." This 
selfishness of his showed in his relations with his 
friends of whom he had too few, it showed in his col- 
lege work which was usually in a bad way, and it was 
a constant blot upon his character. He was exacting 
in his demands upon those with whom he associated ; 
he borrowed notes and books which were never re- 
turned until they were sent for, he asked for help 
in his work whenever and wherever he could get it; 
he had never made sacrifices or depended upon him- 



82 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

self at home and it was hard for him to begin at col- 
lege. 

Last Christmas I had a dozen letters from as many 
mothers whose only sons had not been home since 
the opening of college in September begging me, in 
violation of the college rules, to let them come home 
a few days early — they were homesick. 

" Won't you please let my son come home four 
days early ,^' one mother wrote, " I have not seen him 
for several weeks, and because he is our only child 
I know you will make this special concession in his 
case." When I answered that I regretted not to be 
able to grant her request the father wrote and per- 
suaded a special friend of mine with whom he was 
acquainted to write also to plead for the special priv- 
ilege. 

Though it is true, as I have said, that some of these 
younger sons and only children succeed in carrying 
their college work satisfactorily, that they overcome 
their handicap, yet a very large percentage of them 
fail or do their work in a commonplace way. This 
is not strange, for they find it difficult on their own 
initiative to do anything regularly or thoroughly. 
There is no one to set them to their tasks, and they 
■have seldom formed the habit of setting themselves 
to duty and its accomplishment. They have mostly 
been told what to do, and so now when there is no 
one to tell them to study, to get them up in the morn- 
ing, and to get them off to their college classes, they 
are likely to find themselves in bed at ten o'clock in 
the morning when they should have been at chemistry 
at eight; they are pretty sure to put olf their study 
until to-morrow when there is a vaudeville to which 



YOUNGEST SONS AND ONLY CHILDREN 83 

they may go to-day. It is not difficult to see how 
they find their way to the Dean's office very early in 
their college course. They find the college life more 
strenuous than they had expected, and never before 
having done anything that was difficult or disagree- 
able, they do not see why they should do so now, 

" Why did you not let me know that my son was 
not doing his work ? " a mother wrote me not long 
ago, " and I should have come down and stayed with 
him until he got his work up. I have never let him 
get behind while he was in high school, and I can 
not understand why he is failing now." The trouble 
all lay in the fact that previously his mother had been 
his conscience; he had not learned self-direction in 
any sense ; and having no director he loafed and slept 
late in the mornings. 

It is the spoiled boy at home who in college de- 
velops into the loafer and the indifferent student. 
His parents often do not set for him especially high 
standards ; they are pleased if he does not fail ; they 
are satisfied to have him merely intellectually com- 
monplace. And since they are contented, he has for 
himself no high intellectual ambitions ; he prides him- 
self that he is not a grind and pats himself metaphor- 
ically upon the back when he evades probation. 

It is this same spoiled boy also who in college 
evades everything that is unpleasant or difficult. He 
is in few college activities because to get into activi- 
ties requires initiative and sacrifice, and it demands 
usually more than ordinarily high scholarship. He 
has not learned to economize either his time or his 
money ; he does not know how to make sacrifices, and 
he can not give up the petty gratification or pleasure 



84 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

of the moment in order that he may later enjoy a 
greater and a more worthy pleasure. 

I can understand the interest of parents in their 
children and their desire to save them from sacrifice 
and hardship and pain and struggle, but as they are 
shielded from the difficult they are often harmed; in 
trying to help them we often hinder. Protecting and 
coddling them unfits them for the hardships of life 
which they are as sure to meet as the sun is to rise. 

I said at the outset that my father died when I 
was fifteen. Up to that time I had taken no re- 
sponsibility. I had had no tasks, no difficult prob- 
lems. I had made no sacrifices. I had lived a life 
of pleasure and irresponsibility. Circumstances in 
the family were such that at my father's death it was 
imperative that I should run the farm on which we 
were living. I must do a man's work. I must be 
up in the morning by four o'clock without being 
called, and out in the fields plowing and sowing and 
reaping and looking after all the varied interests 
which have to do with farm life. If my strength 
was slight I must work faster or longer in order to 
accomplish as much as the older and stronger work- 
men. I kept at it eight years and until I entered 
college. It seemed then a cruel hard life for an in- 
experienced child. Often when the load was heavy 
and the problems difficult to solve, in my heart I re- 
belled against my lot; but I kept on, in spite of the 
rebellion, and finished my tasks. Mother encouraged 
me, but she could give little help, little direction, lit- 
tle suggestion. I must meet my own difficulties and 
solve them alone, as I have since learned every one 
must do in life and in death. I look back now to this 



YOUNGEST SONS AND ONLY CHILDREN 85 

experience as the best which could have come to me ; 
it was my salvation. It gave me hard muscles and 
a strong body and a strong will; it showed me that 
one must have backbone and principles if he would 
win the respect of men ; it taught me courage and self- 
reliance and initiative ; through it I was able to find 
myself, and by it I was helped to overcome the handi- 
cap under which many another youngest son or only 
child is struggling. 

I was trying not long ago to help the father of an 
only son to solve his difficulties. The boy had been 
dismissed from college because he had failed through 
loafing and irregular habits. The father was a man 
of moderate means, but the boy had had every in- 
dulgence and no responsibility. 

" What shall I do with him ? " was his query. 

" Put him to work for a year," was my reply ; 
" give him something difficult to do, and let him see 
how hard it is to earn his living." 

" I have a farm," he went on, " I could put him 
out there; but it would be a hard life. He would 
have no pleasure ; the surroundings would not be such 
as he has been used to, but I'll do it." 

"If you do," I warned him, " you will have a more 
severe struggle than the boy. After your disappoint- 
ment has grown a little less keen you will go out to 
the farm some day, and you will see the boy dirty 
and perspiring and tired and your heart will be 
touched ; you will say, ' Why should I torture him in 
this way,' and unless you are a strong man you'll 
bring him away with you." 

" I believe I shall," he said shamefacedly, " I be- 
lieve I haven't the courage to do otherwise," 



86 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

'' But you could make a man of him/' I pleaded as 
he left me. 

A friend of mine, a wise woman with one son, had 
more courage. The boy, who was in the high school, 
got it into his head that he would like to earn a little 
money, and having a job offered him accepted it. 
This work necessitated his getting up at five in the 
morning and working until time to start to school. 

" It must be rather hard on you," a sympathetic 
neighbor said to his mother one day, "getting up so 
early in the morning to get William's breakfast and 
to get him off." 

" But I don't get up," was the mother's reply. 
" When William took the job I explained to him that 
he must manage himself ; if he lost the place through 
failure to get there on time, it was his own fault. 
So he bought a ' Big Ben ' to awaken him at the 
proper time; he gets his own breakfast, and he has 
never been late one morning. It took a lot of cour- 
age and self-control for me to hear him coming down 
stairs before daylight these cold winter mornings and 
not to get up and help him off, but William's char- 
acter is worth more to me than my own selfish com- 
fort in looking after him." She has been a thousand 
times rewarded in the years that have followed in the 
strong, sturdy, self-reliant son to whom she now looks 
up. Her way is the only way I know to make men 
of character and self-reliance and independence. 

No one gains strength except through struggle; 
self-reliance comes through meeting hardships. 
There is no strength of character without sacrifice, 
and as we make it easy for our children, as we save 
them from the hard, unpleasant things qI life unduly 



YOUXGEST SONS AND OXLY CHILDREN 87 

we do them damage. It is the boy who has learned to 
do a task that is given him whether he likes it or not, 
who can direct himself and look after himself, who 
does not shrink from difficult and unpleasant things, 
who does not hesi'tate at sacrifice or self-control, who 
has been taught to think of the comfort and pleasure 
of others as well as of his own — it is this sort of boy 
who is going to get on in college and whose home 
training will show before he has been in the college 
community a week. Such boys are to a college officer 
like the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. The 
spoiled, humored boy who has been kept from hard- 
ships and sacrifice, no matter with what loving care, 
will hardly escape a weak youth and a selfish ineffec- 
tive manhood. 

A brown thrasher has a nest in our sweet honey- 
suckle, and for weeks we have been interested in 
watching her movements. Just now she is teaching 
her children to fly, and it seems to an onlooker no 
trifling task. I said " children," for though we have 
never so trespassed upon the privacy of our shy ten- 
ant as to look into her dwelling, I am sure from the 
way in which she has been conducting her child's 
education that there is more than one little thrasher 
in the nest. It was no only child who was being put 
through his exercises this morning. 

The flrst sound that caught my ear when I wak- 
ened was the voice of the mother, firm and insistent, 
directing and encouraging her child. When I went 
to the window I saw the prospective young aeronaut, 
tailless and nervous, perched on the telephone wire. 
He was very tottery and was whimpering audibly, 
but I could tell from the strong notes of his mother's 



88 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

voice coming from the lilac bushes that she was not 
to be moved by his tears. He must take the initia- 
tive; he must make the leap. She kept after him 
vigorously flying toward him in a most threatening 
manner occasionally^ until finally, screwing up his 
courage, he spread his little wings and landed safe 
in the honeysuckle. A moment later I saw the 
mother fly into the nest with a big juicy worm in her 
bill. It was bad pedagogy, but she had taught him 
self-reliance and self-direction. Later in the day he 
seemed to have developed a considerable initiative, 
and was helping his mother with the housework by 
bringing home a few choice worms for the younger 
children's supper. 

It is not easy to train either young birds or young 
people properly. The most of us who have been 
pushed out early and have had to rely upon our- 
selves hesitate to do the same thing for the youug 
people whom we had under our direction. We would 
fain save them the danger and the pain. So many 
youngest sons and only children have been kept so 
completely from that which is unpleasant or difiicult, 
they have been so coddled and pampered that they 
shrink back when the test comes. They grow selfish 
and lack initiative and self-reliance. They do not 
like that which is difficult. They have whimpered, 
and mother has told them that they need not learn to 
fly. 



"AND SOME MUST WORK" 

There was a letter in my mail this morning from 
a young boy just out of high school. He was desir- 
ous of going to college, and like many another man 
with high ambition, he was without money. 

" Could you find for me," he asked, " some posi- 
tion which would not interfere with my studies, and 
which would bring me in an income of not less than 
fifteen dollars a week ? " 

I was forced to write him that I could not ; that al- 
most any job which he might obtain would interfere 
with his studies, and that if he were to earn fifteen 
dollars a week, unless he were possessed of some spe- 
cific trade or skill worth a high rate of remuneration, 
it would be only by working six hours a day or more, 
and such an amount of time given to outside labor 
would interfere very seriously with any one's studies. 

There are a great many people who labor under the 
mistaken notion that it actually is helpful to a college 
student's scholarship for him to work. I have known 
parents who were quite able to meet their son's col- 
lege expenses, but who refused to do so under the 
false impression that they were doing the boy a service 
by forcing him to earn his living. " It will make a 
man of him," they affirm. " It will teach him the 
value of a dollar." It may, but it will seldom if 
ever conduce to making him a good student, and that 
should be his object in going to college. 

89 



90 DISCIPLINE AND THE DEEELICT 

President Lincoln in a note to Mayor Ramsey once 
wrote : " The lady bearer of this note says she has 
two sons who want to work. Set them at it if pos- 
sible. Wanting work is so rare a want that it should 
be encouraged." A college officer in my position at 
the opening of the college year would not be inclined 
to agree with Mr, Lincoln, for half the correspond- 
ence which comes to my desk during the summer 
months has to do with men who either want to work, 
or who say they do, in order that they may defray 
their college expenses. There are so many of them 
that their correspondence becomes almost depress- 
ing at times, for I realize the disappointments and 
the difficulties which very many of these boys will 
encounter after they reach college, and their unfit- 
ness to do any definite work well. 

" I have been out of high school three years," one 
young fellow writes, " and have not been able to 
save any money. I want, however, very much to go 
to college. Can you secure a place for me to work 
where I can earn my board and room and such ex- 
tra money as I shall need for my other small ex- 
penses?" This man, who has given all his time to 
work for three years and who has done nothing more 
than live, expects easily to carry a college course 
which in itself requires most of a man's time to do 
justice to, and at the same time to earn his living on 
the side. I get many such letters from those who 
feel that earning one's living and going to college 
are in no way incompatible. So much has been 
written about the fellows who have started to college 
without a cent and who have later been valedictorians 
of their classes and ultimately President of the 



" AND SOME MUST WORK " 91 

United States, or at least a member of his cabinet, 
that the average high school boy has little concep- 
tion of what sacrifice and deprivation such a pro- 
cedure involves; if he did understand he would no.t 
so often undertake it, or he would do so after more 
careful deliberation. 

The man who works his way through college sel- 
dom does so because he enjoys working nor, except- 
ing in rare cases, because he has any interest in the 
particular line of work by which he earns his living. 
He works from necessity; his chief thought, com- 
monly, is not centered upon the efficiency of his serv- 
ice nor the value of his work to his employer, but 
upon the amount of cold cash it is going to net him. 
Very few boys who are working their way through 
college are interested in the work they are doing for 
its own sake or for the personal development there 
is in it for them ; they have little thought of perfect- 
ing tlieir skill in such M^ork ; they are looking for- 
ward eagerly to the time when they may leave it and 
take up something tliey really have interest in. 
They are for that reason in many cases indifferent, 
inefficient, and expensvie help, who lack the joy and 
incentive of interest in their work. 

During my own undergraduate days I earned my 
living as a compositor on the student paper. There 
was no enthusiasm in any of the " typos," as they 
were called, to perfect themselves in typesetting ex- 
cepting as such perfection would lead to immediate 
financial returns, and no idea of going permanently 
into the printing business ; type-setting was for them 
simply a makeshift. They were interested chiefly 
in getting a long " string " and in picking off the 



92 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

" fat " jobs from the hook. They were, of course, 
never annoyed if incidentally they helped in getting 
out a creditable paper, but that was merely a side 
issue; the main thing was the pay envelope. None 
of us would have given a moment to type-setting if 
a legacy had been left us, or if we could have ca- 
joled a rich uncle into sending us a satisfactory 
monthly allowance; we worked because it was neces- 
sary to eat and to pay our room rent. 

Too many people attempt to work their way 
through college. Many of our colleges to-day are 
overrun with students with no money, with only 
commonplace ability, and with little initiative and re- 
sourcefulness. It is only the exceptional man with- 
out money who should go to college. Many men say 
that they would not be able to save money if they 
went to work, but it is as easy to economize and to 
save money out of college as it is in, and the com- 
monplace student should either not go at all, or he 
should work and save money enough to allow him 
to devote the greater part of his time to his studies; 
otherwise he is likely to fail. The man who works 
his way too often makes a poor living, and gets little 
college credit ; he might better stick to a good job and 
give up the thought of the higher education than half 
starve and finally flunk in college. The names of 
scores of boys occur to me as I write this sentence 
— boys of only mediocre ability — who tried the 
struggle and failed. 

In a democratic institution where a large per- 
centage of students work, the tendency is for even the 
man who is under no such necessity to try to add to 
his income. When a fellow's roommate is receiving 



"AND SOME MUST WORK" 93 

a pay check every month, it seems to a good many 
men, even though they do not stand in need of the 
money, inexcusable not to do something. Some- 
times the man who needs the money least is most 
skillful and clever in earning it. I have in mind two 
young men who were adept at salesmanship but who 
were quite able to meet all their college expenses. 
They constantly endangered their college work 
through the unreasonable amount of time they put in 
in their business enterprises. Their father, who was 
a shrewd, close-fisted business man, was extremely 
proud of their earnings, never realizing that in 
spending so much of their time in making a few dol- 
lars they were detracting very materially from the 
efficiency of their education. 

Most of the things which have been written of 
boys without education, like Lincoln, who ultimately 
became President of the United States, or of fellows 
with only fifty cents in their pocket who got through 
college on their nerve and made Phi Beta Kappa, are 
romantic, but quite misleading. These things have 
been done (there are the immortal Garfield, and 
Daniel Webster, of course), and they are still being 
done by men of unusual mental and physical equip- 
ment, but they are not easy to do, and they are not 
always desirable to do. The men who accomplished 
these things did so in spite of their handicaps and not 
because of them. 

I have known many a man who paid in privation 
and sacrifice more tlian his college training was 
worth; for he was so engrossed and his time so oc- 
cupied in the struggle for existence that he lost the 
greater part of what he should have obtained from 



94 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

his college life and associations. The memory of 
Allan comes to me as I write. He was at best medi- 
ocre intellectually, and socially he was completely un- 
trained. It was his dogged stubborn persistence only 
that carried him through. He was like a bull dog 
which had taken hold and could not let go. He had 
little resourcefulness, little initiative, so that there 
was nothing open to him but the most menial physi- 
cal tasks. He had few friends and he was often 
without sufficient food. He slept in a stable during 
more than half his life in college and did the dirty 
scullery work at a cheap untidy down-town restaur- 
ant for his meals. He reeked constantly of stable 
odors and of the heavy smells of frying food. His 
wretched life told on him physically and mentally; 
he grew hard, bitter, sullen. He felt, not wholly 
without reason, that every one was against him, 
that he was fighting alone and a losing fight. He 
got his degree, but he left college coarse, soured, 
repellant, ill-trained, without courage to fight longer 
and without hope for the future. He has not ac- 
complished as much since he received his college de- 
gree as he might reasonably have been expected to 
do without education. 

The boy who works his way through college, and 
by this I mean the student who gets no help from 
any other source excepting his own efforts, must first 
of all have concentration, for he will of necessity 
have less time to devote to his studies than have those 
fellows whose entire time is at their disposal. There 
is a pretty general idea that the man in college who 
does not earn a good part of his living is on the 
whole a loafer and a spendthrift, who has so many 



" AND SOME MUST WORK " 95 

vacant hours at his disposal during the day that, un- 
less he gets into some sort of deviltry or extravagance, 
he is likely to grow horribly bored. Quite the con- 
trary is true; for the college course as now planned, 
if it is done well, will give any ordinary young fel- 
low enough to occupy his time quite creditably. 
The man, then, who besides doing his college work 
has to earn his living, will need to give his whole 
time to it, should be able to accomplish more in the 
same length of time than the average fellow, and 
must be satisfied to have little leisure in which to 
read, or play, or develop social graces, or do as he 
likes. 

A young fellow — strong and healthy looking — 
dropped in to see me one day this week. He was 
ambitious but broke. If he came to college, he must 
make his way. He had on hand scarcely more than 
enough money to pay his initial tuition and get his 
books. We went over his plans together, and I 
thought that perhaps he might try it. " There is 
one thing 1 did not tell you," he said just as he was 
ready to leave, " I have always been interested in 
athletics, and if I come to college, I shall want to 
play football." 

I threw up my hands, for even playing football 
sometimes gives a man little enough time for his 
studies, but if a man plays football and earns his liv- 
ing, he has little time for sleep, and none for his 
studies. The athlete is lucky if he passes his 
courses with creditable grades; he can seldom give 
much thought or time to earning his living. 

The boy who must work should be mature and 
strong, and by that I mean usually nineteen or 



96 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

twenty years of age. The burden is often too great 
for a young boy to assume, for such boys are often 
forced to live irregularly, and to keep irregular 
hours either to bring up their college work or to do 
their outside tasks. Not long ago a young fellow, 
still physically immature, called at my office to ask 
my advice. He had little energy, he said, and little 
interest in his work. He found it difficult, when he 
sat down to a task, to accomplish much. I discov- 
ered on inquiry that he was working for a physician. 
He was forced to sit up until midnight to do his col- 
lege tasks, and he had to get up at four or at latest 
at five o'clock in the morning to accomplish the 
things necessary to hold his job with the doctor. 
He was, therefore, getting never more than five hours 
of sleep a day, and yet could not understand why he 
was so lacking in energy and ambition. I have 
always felt that it was a wise and thoughtful phys- 
ician with whom he was living. This slender, grow- 
ing boy was attempting an impossible task, and in 
addition to failing in it — for he did not carry his 
Avork — he was in a fair way permanently to injure 
his health. 

The student worker should be resourceful and 
adaptable, able to fit in anywhere, and able to use 
his brain in his work. It is the man who first meets 
an unsolved condition or satisfies an unsatisfied want 
who makes good at earning a living. Last fall a 
young freshman came to my office to ask me if I 
had any knives or scissors lying about which needed 
sharpening. He carried with him in a neat leather 
case which resembled a Corona typewriter, with its 
traveling clothes on, a small emery wheel and some 



" AND SOME MUST WORK " 97 

simple apparatus for repairing and sharpening tools. 
I had Just been trying to hew a broken lead pencil 
into shape with an impossibly dull knife, so that his 
coming seemed like an angel's visit. I gathered up 
all the paraphernalia in the office which permitted of 
sharpening, and he went at it. They were in a few 
minutes in excellent condition, he collected a quar- 
ter, and I sent him over to my house to make the rest 
of my family happy. I kept my eye on him during 
the year, and Avas not surprised to find that he was 
making a good living during his leisure moments 
because he had had intelligence enough to meet an 
unsatisfied want. 

Several years ago, before the business of pressing 
men's clothes and keeping them in condition had been 
taken up generally, one of our freshmen rented a 
room, bought the necessary apparatus, and agreed 
for one dollar a month to press a suit of clothes 
each week, and to call for the clothes and deliver 
them. It was at that time an innovation, and even 
with one or two assistants, he soon had more business 
than he could take care of. He had a business head, 
he kept his agreements, he did his work well, and 
he was soon one of the financially independent who 
could oversee his business and let some one else do 
the manual labor. I always had the assurance that 
he would get on wherever he went, and I have not 
been mistaken. He is successfully running a fruit 
farm down in Florida now, and last Christmas I had 
a pleasant note from him accompanied by a box of 
delicious grapefruit which caused my family to re- 
member him kindly for many a morning. 

The skilled laborer, the man who has a trade or a 



98 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

talent will get on more easily than other men. Last 
year a young sophomore ' found himself without 
money and without a job. He saw an advertisement 
in the college paper for a cook in one of the short 
order restaurants near the campus. He had helped 
his mother cook at home, he had had a month's ex- 
perience cooking in a summer camp for boys ; he had 
some nerve, so he applied for the place and got it. 
The best part of the story is that he gave satisfac- 
tion, earned his board, and made a respectable salary 
besides. 

The undergraduate who last year at the University 
of Illinois made the most money of any one who was 
trying to earn his living, did so by writing songs. 
His poetic efforts were in no sense remarkable; in 
fact I am not sure but that the same thing might be 
said of most of those words and music which are ring- 
ing in our ears most often as we go down the street, 
but what this young fellow wrote seemed to catch 
the popular ear, and he reaped the reward of his ap- 
peal. He had a certain talent that was not great, 
perhaps, but it was not common. 

It is the man who lets his brains save his strength, 
who makes the most money. In fact it is most often 
the man who does not work at all physically but 
who uses his head to make his plans and who hires 
some less clever thinkers to take the hard knocks, — 
it is this sort of fellow who really earns his way 
through college most successfully. A wide awake 
junior last year made arrangements with a city 
wholesale house to take orders for butter. Early in 
the fall he made a preliminary canvass of all the 
fraternity houses and general student boarding clubs, 



" AND SOME MUST WORK " 99 

and took their orders for the year. Each house is 
sent so many pounds a week directly from the city. 
There is no further ordering and no delivering by 
the student; all he has to do is to send out the 
monthly bills and make his collections. With little 
real work he has made considerably more than enough 
to pay his college expenses. When he gets through 
college he will have several hundred dollars to his 
credit in the bank with which to start business. " I 
could clear two thousand dollars a year at the work," 
he admitted to me, " if I wanted to give the time to 
it, but I don't believe in making too much." 

I have said before that the man who must meet all 
of his expenses while doing his college work must be 
mature and physically strong. A young fellow past 
twenty-five, who graduated from one of our Middle 
West state universities last year illustrates my point. 
He had learned to operate a linotype machine and 
was beside this a physical giant. When he came to 
college he was put on a night shift in one of the local 
printing offices. He did his studying in the after- 
noon and in the evening; he did his full day's work 
in the printing office after seven o'clock in the even- 
ing, and he got on with from five to seven hours of 
sleep a day and incidentally earned eighty dollars a 
month throughout his college course. He had so 
much money in the bank when he finished that he 
was able to marry on the day of his graduation and 
set up housekeeping for himself. I should not, how- 
ever, advise m.any people to try to duplicate his task, 
for very few undergraduates would have either the 
skill or the physical endurance to do the work that 
he did. With all his strength, too, he knew his limi- 



100 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

tations. His work, his studies, and sleep took up all 
his time. He had no recreation, no social pleasures, 
no real fun. 

Fifty years ago when the farmer's son with an 
empty poeketbook and a desire for learning set out 
for college, he carried with him a bag of potatoes or a 
sack of corn meal upon which to subsist frugally 
while he toiled at his books. It is done differently 
to-day. A few years ago the sons of the families of 
two farmers with whom I am acquainted solved their 
financial difficulties and met their college expenses in 
an entirely individual manner. They borrowed a few 
of the family cows, drove them across the country, 
found a lodging place for themselves and their 
charges near the campus, and lived comfortably and 
independently during their college course by selling 
and delivering milk to boarding clubs mornings and 
evenings. When they left college they still had their 
original capital intact, and took it back home with 
them in as good condition, barring the wear and tear 
of four years of service, as when they came. 

Barbers seem always in demand about a college 
community, though I have known but one to finish 
his course. Musicians usually find employment, 
especially if the college is situated in a country 
place, as ours is, where most of the recreation and 
amusement of the students they must themselves fur- 
nish. There is always a good deal of dancing — 
too much in fact many people say — connected with 
a large co-educational institution, and where there 
is dancing there must be music — ragtime or other- 
wise. At the University of Illinois most of the local 
orchestras are composed largely of students, and 



" AND SOME MUST WORK " 101 

many of them are controlled or managed by student 
leaders. These men all belong to the musicians' 
union and receive the regular scale of wages, which 
is a pretty generous one, set by the union. Since 
most of the engagements of these orchestras come at 
the end of the week, the members often have a chance 
to play two evenings and one afternoon a week, and 
though the physical strain is a hard one, they find it 
possible to sleep up on Sunday and so be in fair 
shape for the regular scholastic work of the week. I 
have known a large number of fellows who in this 
way met all of their necessary expenses and a few 
who were able to make more than they really needed 
while carrying their college courses, but the number 
of these last is small. 

The skillful salesman with a line of goods which 
the public wants or which it can with a minimum 
expenditure of energy be made to want, can get on 
well in college. Just the other day, as I was walking 
down the street, I encountered an energetic junior 
who seemed to be bent on some business enterprise. 

" Wliat are you doing? " I asked. 

" I'm making a house to house canvass for the sale 
of neckties," was his reply. 

" Making any money ? " 

" As much as I need." 

But unfortunately there are not many natural or 
skillful salesmen, and when one has no natural tal- 
ent in this direction, he had better wait for his sea- 
son of practice until he is not in actual need of 
money. The experience gained in learning to sell 
things is valuable, but it sometimes costs more than 
it is worth if the embryo salesman is trying to earn 



102 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

his college expenses. The last thing I should advise 
the indigent undergraduate to do either during the 
college year or during the summer vacation is to 
take up salesmanship and especially to take up the 
selling of books, for unless he has peculiar talent in 
such work, he is likely to fail, the optimistic litera- 
ture sent out by the publishers of subscription books 
to the contrary notwithstanding. Every spring there 
come to our institution, as I suppose to all other sim- 
ilar ones in the Middle West, representatives of the 
houses publishing subscription books who give their 
effort in securing the services of undergraduates to 
go out over the country during the summer to sell 
these wares. Some of the men who take up the 
work must succeed or the publishing houses would 
go out of business, but it is also a fact that many of 
those who take up the business do badly and give 
their time and energy very largely for experience. 

The great majority of young fellows who are with- 
out money and who wish a college education are 
equally without talent or special skill. It is, how- 
ever, very often the tales of what men with special 
talents have done that goad on the commonplace man 
and deceive him into the belief that he can do as well 
in earning a living as his better qualified classmate. 
\^nien he finds that all that is open to him, all, in- 
deed, that he is fitted for, is waiting table or wash- 
ing dishes or taking care of furnaces at so much an 
hour, perhaps, the glamour of earning his way 
through college and graduating with money in the 
bank fades quickly. Money earned in this way, and 
this in actual fact is the common way, counts up 
slowly and is a heavy drain upon the worker's time. 



"AND SOME MUST WORK" 103 

The first thing a man should ask himself who is con- 
templating self-support in college is what special 
thing he can do that will help him to earn money 
readily. 

I have always advised the ordinary man without 
money and just out of high school to wait a while 
before entering college. Two or three years of work 
will give him more maturity and so fit him better to 
withstand the heavy strain of doing two difficult 
things at once, as he will have to do when he carries 
his college course and earns his living at the same 
time, and if he is any way nearly as economical before 
he enters college as he will need to be afterward, he 
will be able to save a considerable sum of money to 
tide him over the first few months in college when he 
is getting his bearings and finding out what he can 
best do. No man should enter college who has not 
money enough to take him through the first half year 
without his working, and it would be better if he had 
made arrangements for an entire year. I say this in 
spite of the fact that a good many fellows struggle 
through the year successfully without taking these 
precautions, and in spite of the fact that many peo- 
ple urge the high school graduate to go immediately 
to college whether he has money or not. It is be- 
cause of the great number of men who fail utterly or 
who have so little time for their studies that they 
accomplish practically nothing, that I feel as I do. 

The man who has to work his way through college 
should be as well dressed as possible. He ought not 
wherever he goes to advertise the fact that he is in 
financial straits. He will not need better clothes 
than other fellows, but he will have to give them more 



104 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

careful and constant attention, because he will often 
have to do work that is dirty and because he will 
have more temptations to carelessness in dress than 
many other men. Too many college men who are 
self-supporting divulge the fact to every one they 
meet by their generally woe-begone and run-down 
appearance. The four years which a man spends in 
college give him pretty confirmed habits of life, and 
these include certain habits of dress. If in college 
he wears sloppy untidy clothes, goes with his shoes 
unbrushed and his trousers covered with grease spots 
and bagging at the knees, it will be hard for him to 
develop habits of neatness and care in dress after 
he leaves college. He should have substantial, neat, 
well-made clothes that do not invite attention because 
they are of the latest extreme cut or because they 
are completely out of style, and he should give them 
regular care. He must do this because a working 
man subjects his clothes to harder service than do 
other men, and at the same time he must wear 
them longer and still have them look well. 

A good deal has been said in one place or another 
of the social ostracism of those who are forced to be 
self-supporting in college. In so democratic an en- 
vironment as a state university we are not likely to 
see much of that. I have not found in my own ex- 
perience that it made any difference to a man's social 
standing whether he worked or not. There is not a 
social fraternity at the University of Illinois which 
does not have among its members men who must earn 
their living. Such men are not thought of less or 
more, nor should they be. 

The man who is working his way is entitled to as 



"AND SOME MUST WORK" 105 

much respect and consideration as other men ; I have 
seldom been able to see that he is entitled to more 
than are other men who are doing their college duties 
well. Self-support in college is not a matter either 
for self-congratulation or self-humiliation. The man 
who has to work is not the subject for special sym- 
pathy or special favors. He ought not to ask or 
expect to be exempted from the duties which fall to 
all students; he should not be annoyed if his omis- 
sions and his irregularities are looked upon in the 
same light as are those of other students. The young 
fellow who expects the college authorities to grant 
him special privileges, who thinks himself entitled 
to a larger number of cuts, or to longer vacations than 
those normally granted by the college simply because 
he works, is lacking a little. It is the man who 
meets the conditions of life into which he goes with- 
out complaint and without asking for favor that has 
the right stuff in him. 

There is a quite general feeling among those who 
have never given the subject any serious thought or 
study that the man who works his way through col- 
lege is more likely than other men to succeed in later 
life. I do not believe this, and I should be very glad 
to believe it if the facts warranted it. Men go to 
college for the training of the mind. The very fact 
that the self-supporting undergraduate must spend 
hours each day in earning a living, keeps him from 
the very thing for which he is making his chief sac- 
rifice, and takes away from the very preparation 
which is fitting him for success in after life. The 
man in college who meets the necessity for self-sup- 
port cleverly and skillfully, who uses his brains to 



106 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

help feed him and clothe him, is no doubt perma- 
nently helped by this effort, but the number of self- 
supporting students who really do exhibit skill and 
finesse in their own support is very small. On the 
whole I believe that the future of students is injured 
rather than helped by their undergraduate labors for 
a living, and I should not find it hard to furnish 
many examples from real life to substantiate this 
statement. There are, of course, examples to the 
contrary, but these simply serve to prove the rule. 

Two years ago, I sent out to all of our undergrad- 
uates, one-third of whom, perhaps, do something to- 
ward self-support, a letter of inquiry. I wished to 
get the opinion of the men who were working as to 
whether such work was helpful or otherwise to their 
studies. It is true that the perspective of the man 
himself is perhaps a little too close for him adequately 
to judge, but at least the answers were interesting. 

To the question : " Do you think your studies 
suffered because of outside work ? " thirty-nine per 
cent, of the students replied in the affirmative, and 
sixty-one per cent, replied in the negative. Fifty 
per cent, thought that every student should do at 
least a small amount of work. The reason given in 
nearly every case by the working students was the 
conventional assertion that the holding of a job 
teaches a man the value of a dollar. Other argu- 
ments in favor of working were that outside work 
compels concentration and study, teaches economy, 
regularity, self-control, self-reliance, and conserva- 
tion of time. They said that the worker gains an 
acquaintance with the ways of man and the ways of 
the world. He avoids loafing and uses to advantage 



" AND SOME MUST WORK " 107 

those hours which would otherwise be spent iu idle- 
ness. A good job keeps a man from acquiring bad 
habits and inspires in him respect for democracy. 

Those who took the opposite view alleged that col- 
lege is no place for earning a living. There is no 
time for the broader things of education if a man 
must earn his way, whether wholly or in part. The 
opinion of many of these fellows who have earned 
their living and who do not look with favor upon 
the practice, is that outside work deprives the student 
of the opportunity to engage in athletics, social and 
other college activities, and so keeps him from one of 
the most valuable experiences in college life. It 
often makes him conceited, over self-reliant and too 
much in love with his own accomplishments. He is 
likely to undervalue real culture because he has had 
no time to give either to understanding what it 
means or to acquiring it. The fact that students 
work outside results very often in the college grad- 
uate's being a craftsman rather than a broadly edu- 
cated man. Most of the work done by students in 
college in their attempts to earn their living is not 
helpful to them later in the professions which they 
fill. It is injurious to their life work and detracts 
from their efficiency. The good which a man may 
normally expect to get out of four years of college is 
thus very much lessened. As one man says : " A fel- 
low who has earned his living has most of the joy 
and all of the culture taken out of his college life." 

My own observation of the men who work their 
way through college is that too many who are un- 
qualified attempt the task. Many a boy pays too high 
a price for the education he receives. Men do not 



108 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

always realize what they are missing or how much 
their studies are suffering from their outside work. 
As I see it tlirough the experience of thirty years 
of pretty active contact with the man who works 
his way, the fellow who can get an education in no 
other way should accept the situation bravely and 
not whine; he should neither be proud of it nor 
ashamed of it. The fellow who works his way when 
he need not do so or who simply wishes to show his 
independence, is foolish and not using his time to the 
best advantage; and the father who forces his son to 
earn his way when he could just as well furnish him 
the money, himself needs educating. 



THE POLITICIAN 

I HAD not been long in college before I learned 
that political parties and political organizations, and 
politicians are quite as evident among college under- 
graduates, and are considered quite as nec?essary as 
they are among the voters of a commonwealth. 
There were few students in attendance when I en- 
tered college, but it took me only a few weeks to see 
that political lines were as closely drawn in that little 
community as in state or national affairs, and that if 
I desired political, and to some extent social, ad- 
vancement I must ally myself with one side or the 
other. The literary societies were the dominant po- 
litical parties at tliis time, and the one that I joined 
was in control of the political power of the institu- 
tion. I should not have admitted the fact at that 
time, but in all probability its political prestige was 
one of the deciding factors in determining my choice, 
for I had myself more than a passing interest in 
politics. My political future was tlierefore assured. 
No one got a place on the college newspaper or the 
class annual or on class committees unless he had a 
stand-in with the political party, alias the literary 
society that was in power. It was scarcely ever a 
case of fitness for the office, although within limits 
fitness may have been considered — it was rather a 
case of who your friends were and how well they were 
organized, Char.lie Gibson was no doubt very much 
better fitted to be editor of the college paper, than 

109 



110 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

was Lin Wilbur, but Charlie had few supporters and 
fewer admirers of his talents, and he belonged to the 
wrong political party, so that settled his case. I re- 
member that Lin told me with some chagrin that 
when he was approached by his friends who asked 
him to become a candidate, the spokesman of the 
party said, " It isn't because you are the best man, 
Lin, that we are asking you to run, but because you 
can be elected." The organization was simple, but 
it was effective; we were able to predict two or three 
years ahead who would hold the important offices, 
and we scarcely ever missed it, nor do the politicians 
of to-day. 

I was talking not long ago with one of the old 
timers who was deploring the fact that things have 
changed so completely since he was in college, and, 
from his point of view, changed for the worse. The 
fraternities, he said, had come in and had under- 
mined the influence and work of the literary societies 
which, he averred, had done so much to train men 
to think and to speak effectively. I pointed out to 
him that the former supposed province of the literary 
societies had been usurped by the English depart- 
ment and that in reality the literary societies in his 
time and in mine were the most carefully organized 
political machines extant ; that they would have made 
a present-day democratic central committee ashamed 
of its crude work, and further that the fraternities 
were simply playing in an amateurish and weak way 
the political game that the literary societies had 
taught them. I cited a few things to him that had 
occurred while he was in college, and after he had 
thought these over a short time, he decided that per- 



THE POLITICIAN 111 

haps things were not so bad now as he had supposed, 
and that the political game is as old as time. It was 
worked as skillfully when Jacob organized the home 
forces and " rimmed " Esau out of his birthright as 
it is to-day. 

Politics in college are not run very differently from 
city politics, or state politics. As the college in- 
creases in size the organization must become more 
complex, the difficulties of control grow greater, and 
more genius in leadership is required. A friend of 
mine who, during his senior year, had been elected 
to the position of president of the athletic associa- 
tion of one of the large Middle West state universi- 
ties said to me that the planning and organization of 
his campaign for this office required more thought 
and work than was later necessary to get him elected 
to the state legislature from his home district, on 
the Eepublican ticket, in a Democratic community. 

If one desires to be elected to any general office 
in a large university he must make his plans early. 
I am more and more astonished when I am brought 
to appreciate how early tliey must be made. I have 
no doubt, for instance, that at this moment the po- 
litical forces in the sophomore class of the University 
of Illinois are fully organized, and that the plans 
are all made, the candidates all chosen, and many of 
the appointments to committees decided upon for the 
management of the class when they shall have reached 
senior standing. The unexpected events which al- 
ways occur even in the best of family and political 
organizations will necessitate numerous changes in 
these plans, no doubt, but I am quite sure that such 
plans are already formed. 



112 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

So far as my information and experience goes, 
every institution, large or small, has its politicians 
who control, in a more or less complete way, under- 
graduate affairs and undergraduate offices. Some- 
times they do it well; sometimes very much to the 
conirsiTj. If the authorities of any college think this 
is not true in the institution with which they are con- 
nected, I am convinced that they have not probed 
under the surface of undergraduate activities. To 
hold the strings that may be pulled, to shuffle the 
cards in order that one may get a good hand, to 
try to get into a position of control or of preferment 
is as natural and as human in college, and out for 
some people, as to look out for three meals a day. 

In college, as out of it, the successful politician 
is always a part of a well-knit organization. This 
organization may be an open and a recognized one 
acting under a given name and with college author- 
ity, or it may be an unauthorized and informal one, 
unknown to the general community. It may be the 
literary societies, it may be the fraternities, or it may 
be some democratic organization whose ostensible 
purpose is to oppose organizations in general, but no 
man ever got very far politically or in a business 
way without building up around him some sort of 
machine. The secret organizations about most col- 
leges whose membership is discreetly kept under the 
rose, are for the most part political, though their 
adherents claim strenuously that politics never enter 
into their deliberations. One of the most carefully 
organized poHtical machines in the institution of 
which I am a member has regularly held that polit- 
ical machinations are unknown within its member- 



THE POLITICIAN 113 

ship, yet it manages every year to name most of the 
successful candidates for office and to control most of 
the undergraduate affairs which have connected with 
them either profit or honor. The only explanation 
of why members of Greek letter fraternities, in most 
of the colleges in which they exist, hold much more 
than their proportionate share of class offices and 
political jobs in general is because these men are or- 
ganized, and so have little trouble in getting their 
men by. The man in an organization comes to ex- 
pect appointment or election merely because he be- 
longs to an organization, and the public very often 
comes, also, to expect the same thing. 

I have not thought it necessary to explain, except- 
ing by implication, what I mean by politician and 
politics. What I do mean by politician as related 
to college is the man who through diplomacy and 
finesse and conscious planning and organization gets 
control of undergraduate affairs, decides who shall 
run for class president, who shall be editor of the col- 
lege daily, who shall be chairman of the Junior 
Prom committee, and who shall run whatever in stu- 
dent affairs needs running — in short the man who 
in the college community is the power behind the 
throne. The mayor of a city is not necessarily the 
most influential man in the conduct of municipal 
affairs ; in many cases he is merely a figurehead who 
was chosen by the real politicians of the community 
to be a foil for their schemes and plans. So, too, 
in college. The recent president of one of our soph- 
omore classes was in no sense prominent or influen- 
tial. He was picked for the place by the real leaders 
who got him elected and who told him what to do. 



114 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

and who selected his committees for him and planned 
the class functions without reference to his views or 
his comfort or pleasure. It would not be unlikely 
that they even told him what young woman he was 
to take to the Cotillion. He was in no sense a poli- 
tician; he was simply a tool who was managed by 
politicians, who are the real bosses of every com- 
munity. 

The politician in college is a man upon whom 
there are many responsibilities if he will assume 
them. He is restricted, it is true, in his movements 
and in his opportunities for exploitation, by conven- 
tions, by college traditions, and by precedent, but 
even these if he is bold and aggressive he may often 
over-ride. Through long years of practice there 
have come to be somewhat rigidly established in every 
college, even though there are no fixed rules in print, 
customs, and expense rates, and recognized methods 
of procedure which one finds it difficult to deviate 
from. But even circumscribed by these the man in 
general control of undergraduate affairs has things 
pretty much his own way in the direction and man- 
agement of the social life of the college, the general 
activities of classes, the policies and control of publi- 
cations, dramatics, and all the other activities with 
which students are concerned. Sometimes he keeps 
his hands out of athletics, but the illustration is not 
far to seek where even in the determination of ath- 
letic affairs the politician has not been averse to de- 
termining what should be done, and who should be 
selected to do it. The larger the institution the 
more likely he is to attempt universal control of af- 
fairs. 



THE POLITICIAN 115 

All this is not so simple nor so innocent as it might 
at first seem. In an institution that numbers its 
students by the thousands any man in prominence in 
undergraduate activities is responsible directly or in- 
directly for the expenditure of considerable sums of 
money. In any one of a score of our prominent in- 
stitutions, for instance, the chairman of the commit- 
tee in charge of any large dance, conservatively speak- 
ing, has control of the expenditure of at least a thou- 
sand dollars. The chairman of the senior invitation 
committee last year at the University of Illinois ex- 
pended two or three thousand dollars. The manager 
of a modern college daily may easily have pass 
through his hands during one year eiglit or ten thou- 
sand dollars, and in most cases these officers are ap- 
pointed by the class president or elected by under- 
graduate vote. Often, then, appointments come 
purely as rewards for political loyalty, for standing 
by the candidate for office. More often than other- 
wise such positions are plums thrown down to the 
friends below who have given the aspirant for office 
a leg up the political tree. The amount of money 
which in these days is directly under the control of 
the college politician is rather startling when we come 
to sum up the total. Its control, it is true, is not 
infrequently reasonably well safe-guarded by college 
rules and college supervision, but even the most care- 
ful supervision has its loopholes which the shrewd 
undergraduate is not slow to discover, and not always 
averse to slipping through. 

It is the man in control of undergraduate affairs, 
too, who ultimately makes customs, who establishes 
traditions, who determines ideals, good or bad, for 



116 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

those with whom he works, or for those who come 
after him. I had a talk only a few weeks ago with 
the chairman of one of our underclass committees. 
The committee, which was a pretty large one with 
duties which were quite trifling (to select caps for 
the sophomore class), had been appointed in the early 
spring. Because of unusual conditions, it had not 
had a meeting, had done no business, and was not 
likely to do any. The topic of discussion between 
us was a rather extravagant bill for stationery for 
the use of this committee. The argument of the 
committee chairman in brief was that though no 
business had been transacted and though none would 
be transacted by the committee, the members were 
entitled to such trifling spoils as stationery, because 
by merely representing the class in an official way 
they had earned something, and because stationery 
had from time immemorial been a perquisite of class 
committees. He was not concerned with the fact 
that some one would have to pay for it or that his 
committee had rendered no real service. It had ren- 
dered a worthy service, he held, by allowing itself to 
be appointed. I do not know whether or not he was 
a member of that distinguished political party which 
was first responsible for the doctrine, but he was quite 
convinced of the justice embodied in the statement 
" To the victors belong the spoils." 

In any community, civil or collegiate, there are not 
m»any politicians. Most people are indifferent to 
these things, — ^tliey are not interested in them. I 
am surprised and annoyed over and over again to 
find how indifferent they are. Ninety per cent, 
of the college community are indifferent as to who 



THE POLITICIAN 117 

has charge of undergraduate affairs. One candidate, 
to most men, looks as good as another. It takes the 
thunders and the eruptions of a political campaign 
to stir up the layman, and often even these have little 
effect on him. " I don't care who is elected, just so 
they let me alone,^' is the common cry in college and 
out of it. Most people are glad to have the other 
fellow run things, provided they are themselves not 
disturbed or called upon to help in the running — 
otherwise the politician would have a more difficult 
time than he now does. Few, also, are willing to give 
the time that it takes to be a successful politician, 
for the majority of undergraduate students are con- 
scientious and give their main time and thought to 
their studies, the general opinion to the contrary not- 
withstanding. There is no doubt but that it takes 
an unconscionable amount of time to manage polit- 
ical matters. Those who go into our national polit- 
ical life usually find that they have no time left for 
any other business, and so the college man finds — if 
he is a successful politician — and his term grades 
usually suffer. His scholastic salvation is found only 
in the fact that few undergraduates begin their po- 
litical career until after they have learned how to 
manage their studies, so that after they go in for pol- 
itics they carry their work on their former reputation. 
In these matters, again, the college politician differs 
little from his more experienced brother out in the 
world. 

SpeaJcing of the time it requires for a man with 
political aspirations to accomplish his purposes, 
brings to my mind the case of a student who at the 
beginning of his junior year conceived the idea of 



118 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

securing the position of editor of the college daily in 
his senior year. The office was a profitable and a 
prominent one ; it carried with it a remuneration 
sufficient adequately to meet all his expenses during 
his last year in college, and it made him almost cer- 
tain of election to the senior society — an honor 
which most college students rate very highly. The 
office at that time was obtained through a general 
vote of the student body, and the election came late 
in May. From the opening of college in the fall 
this ambitious politician pursued his strenuous polit- 
ical campaign. Every day of the week excepting 
Sunday — he devoted several hours to making ac- 
quaintances, and building his political fences. He 
visited students' rooms, he met students on the street, 
he buttonholed them on the campus. Before the 
end of spring he had built a political fortress that 
was impregnable, and he had personally seen in his 
own interests every one of the thousands of voters on 
the campus. Then when the election was on and 
he was Just about ready to begin to pass out the party 
rewards, he found that his studies were in such con- 
dition that he was not eligible for election. He had, 
however, accumulated a considerable amount of ex- 
perience, political and otherwise, and I have no doubt 
could hardly consider the time wholly wasted, even 
if he did lose the election ; but few students would be 
willing to give so much time or could afl^ord to give 
it, for the sake of winning any college office, and no 
college office with which I am familiar is worth the 
sacrifice of time which he made. 

One of the regrettable things about college politics 
is that real merit so often counts for little. Fitness 



THE POLITICIAN 119 

for the office is too often little considered if consid- 
ered at all. Popularity, prominence, availability, 
and, more than all of these, frequently, manageability 
are the qualities which bring a man success in the 
political game in college. The most popular man in 
college is the successful athlete. Youth, both fem- 
inine and masculine, will continue to admire physical 
beauty and physical accomplishments no matter how 
vigorously we who are older and more experienced 
may eulogize intellectual power. The military con- 
flict through which we have passed will not tend 
to dim the glory of the hero in physical combat, and 
will intensify tliis sort of hero worship in the minds 
of college youths generally. 

Though the athlete in college, if he does not neg- 
lect his athletic business, is the worst possible candi- 
date for official position or political activity because, 
on account of the exactions of his sport, he has no 
time to give to such things, yet, since he is so con- 
stantly and so favorably in the public eye, he can with 
less personal effort be elected to office, and so is fre- 
quently tempted through ambition and vanity to 
make the race. It is a safe conclusion, however, that 
the athlete in office, whether the position be chairman 
of the hat committee or president of the Young Men's 
Christian Association, is there primarily for adver- 
tising purposes, and will do little work and do the 
office little credit. The fact that he is entitled to it, 
as he so frequently claims, seldom gives him the feel- 
ing that he is also under the most serious obligations 
to fulfill the duties of the office which he has assumed. 

Prominence of any sort is almost equally sure to 
help a man in college toward political success. If 



120 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

an undergraduate has attained success in any line 
of endeavor, excepting in intellectual lines which no- 
where, in the world, so far as I know, gives a man any 
political prestige, he is at once thought of as fit to be 
at the head of one undergraduate activity or another. 
The debater in some localities has vogue, the society 
man can not be wholly overlooked, and the " good 
fellow," whatever that may mean, is almost next in 
prominence to the athlete. 

The man who can play both ends against the mid- 
dle is a likely candidate. If one is popular with his 
own party and does not arouse antagonism in the 
other, he is often thought the most available candi- 
date because he is most likely of election without a 
hard fight, and no politician likes a hard fight if vic- 
tory may be gained easily. The ease with which a 
man may be managed is often an important factor in 
his selection as a candidate for office. 

Very often an innocent, pliable, harmless person is 
selected because nothing particular can be said 
against him, and he has so little independence that' 
when he is inducted into office the real politicians 
will have no difficulty in inducing him to back their 
schemes. There is in reality, it may be said, a con- 
siderable political advantage in this sort of candi- 
date at times, for he has attracted so little attention 
from the authorities beforehand that through his in- 
strumentality many things can be done quietly which 
would be suspected and detected in a better known 
and a more independent man. The worst political 
gang I ever knew in college always were able to point 
with virtuous pride to their candidates in whose per- 
sonal record it was seldom possible to find a flaw. It 



THE POLITICIAN 121 

is not enough to know who is running for office or 
who is holding office, but rather who is behind him, 
who is managing him, if one expects to control the 
situation. 

There is a growing feeling among college poli- 
ticians, I am sorry to say, that whatever activity an 
undergraduate engages in he is entitled to some tan- 
gible return. In my own undergraduate days elec- 
tion to office or appointment to membership on a 
committee was in itself considered an honor and a 
distinction which more than compensated for the 
work or effort necessary in the performance of the 
duty assigned. Now everything is different. The 
candidate's first question is, " What is there in it ? " 
Now the man who considers whether or not he will 
become a candidate for office or accept a position on a 
committee is quite likely to view the whole proceed- 
ing from the standpoint of personal profit. Some- 
times this profit is expected to be in hard cash; at 
other times it takes the form of passes, of tickets to 
entertainments, of free stationery, or free cabs, or 
free stamps. Many office-holders do not get their 
fingers far into the bag, but they are not satisfied to 
play the political game and hold office for the mere 
sport of playing ; there must be a small stake at least. 
Even the man who helps a fellow student to election 
by voting for him expects something. Last year I 
was speaking to one of our class presidents who ran 
unopposed for the office. It seemed to me that he 
was making his class committees (all of whom would 
receive some gratuities for their services or supposed 
services) too large for any reason. 

" Why do you do it ? '' I asked. 



122 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

" They all helped me pretty faithfully in my elec- 
tion campaign/' he replied. 

" You didn't need help," I protested ; " you would 
have been elected no matter if they had not worked, 
for there was no rival candidate." 

" But there would have been," he said, flushing, 
" if I had not given them to understand that, if 
elected, I would take car£ of them satisfactorily." 

It is quite safe to say that the college politician 
would seldom be moved in his selection of a cabinet 
of helpers and advisers by any appeal as to their fit- 
ness and experience. He does not pay much atten- 
tion to his rivals, no matter what their claims to 
merit may be, when it comes to the partitioning out 
of offices or committee jobs. Any one who is fa- 
miliar with the political complexion of a college 
community could pick ninety per cent, of the ap- 
pointees to office if he were told who the appointing 
officer is. 

" I want to appoint the best man in college to be 
chairman of the invitation committee," an upper 
class president said to me not long ago. 

" The most reliable man you could choose is 
Briggs, whom you defeated in the election," I sug- 
gested. 

"What would my friends think of me if I ap- 
pointed him ? " he asked. 

" They'd think you had independence and nerve, 
and you ought to. be able to stand that," I replied. 
But he had neither. 

The most comforting part of all my years of ex- 
perience and acquaintance with college politicians is 
the fact that every year I find the man who has inde- 



THE POLITICIAN 123 

pendence, who is not willing to be managed, who 
does not approve of political chicanery, and who 
disappoints and surprises the friend who expected 
to profit from his election. 

Not long ago a young junior came to me to get 
my opinion as to his fitness for the position of presi- 
dent of one of our important student organizations. 

" You'd be a poor man for the place," I said to him 
frankly. " You are not aggressive, you are not in- 
dependent, and the men behind you are lacking in 
the right political principles." 

" I think I'll surprise you," he said, and he did. 
He succeeded in the election, and before he gradu- 
ated I wrote him that I considered him the best of- 
ficer his organization had ever had. He was punc- 
tilious in the performance of the duties of his office, 
and these were not few. He would not be managed, 
he would not tolerate irregularity or dishonesty, and 
when his friends shirked the obligations of the posi- 
tions to which he had appointed them, they were sup- 
planted by other men who were willing to do the 
work well. He was quiet, apparently unaggressive, 
but firm, shrewd, and honest. I never knew whether 
or not my adverse criticism stimulated him to do his 
best, but I do know that I wish every college had 
more undergraduate officials like him. 

Another similar illustration occurs to me. The 
man in question was chosen to run for president of 
the senior class because it was taken for granted that 
he would handle affairs to the financial advantage of 
his friends. He allowed himself to be supported in 
his political campaign by the most untrustworthy 
politicians on the campus. After his flection he 



124 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

called his appointees together and very frankly told 
them that he recognized the fact that he had been 
elected because a number of people who had supported 
him expected to profit by his supposed crookedness. 
He was sorry so completely to disappoint his friends 
who had trusted him, he said, but he had determined 
when selected to run for office to stand for no graft 
and no dishonesty. He would expose any one whom 
he caught engaged in any shady action. If he had 
appointed any one who did not care to work under 
these circumstances that person might resign. There 
were no resignations, and there was an absolutely 
clean administration. The chairman of the invita- 
tion committee told me afterward that a representa- 
tive of an eastern engraving company offered him one 
hundred and fifty dollars in cash if the chairman 
would place the order for the invitation with his com- 
pany. " I knew that the president would not stand 
for it,'^ he said, " even if I had been willing to do so, 
and I turned him down and placed the order with 
another company." 

The party fealty of specific organizations about a 
campus is usually unbelievably strong. For twenty 
years or more the same organizations with us have 
been ranged against each other on every political 
issue that has come up. We have always been mor- 
ally certain that if the Phi Belts voted for a candi- 
date the Phi Gams would be to a man against him. 
Organization members have seldom voted as individ- 
uals ; they have voted as the organization determined, 
and the organization usually determined to stand 
with the party whose cause they had regularly es- 
poused. The chief argument that I have ever heard 



THE POLITICIAN 125 

for the establishment and continuance of inter-fra- 
ternity organizations is that such affiliations bring 
men of various fraternities together, that they widen 
acquaintanceships, undermine prejudices, and break 
down party lines. I think it does widen a man's 
acquaintances for him to belong to such an organiza- 
tion or organizations, but as for affecting his preju- 
dices or in any way influencing his party affiliations, 
I think the inter-fraternity organization with us has 
not had the slightest influence. No matter how 
many friends a man may have made through these 
outside relationships, when it comes to voting he 
stays with his old party. I have known one or two 
men who refused to vote for a fraternity or party 
brother who was running for office, but such instances 
are so rare as to make the individual guilty of such 
independent thinking seem almost freakish. 

The great body of undergraduates and the vast ma- 
jority of the faculty have given little thought to the 
power and influence of the political leader in col- 
lege even if they have gone so far as to recognize his 
existence. He, far more than the teacher of ethics, 
is responsible for the moral and intellectual ideals of 
undergraduates. He has an immeasurable influence 
over the undergraduate attitude toward graft, to- 
ward integrity in business, toward virtue and clean- 
ness of life, and he is on a level with his student com- 
panion and talks to him directly and in a language 
which he can understand. I have seen the spirit of 
the whole undergraduate body disturbed and changed 
through the influence of one man ; I have seen vicious 
undergraduate customs set aside and almost com- 
pletely wiped out in the same way. 



126 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

A few years ago the University was torn from one 
end to the other by the practice of hazing. ISTothing 
else did the institution so much damage, for it an- 
gered the supporters of the institution and bade fair 
to undermine and divert their interest. The legisla- 
ture was not willing to give its support to an institu- 
tion in which such a practice prevailed. The chief 
stimulus to hazing was the posting by members of 
the sophomore class, followed by a similar action by 
members of the freshman class, of certain inflamma- 
tory proclamations which stirred the members of the 
two under classes and brought them into personal 
contact with each other. This distributing of the 
proclamations was done very quickly and very secretly 
at night, without announcement, so that it proved ex- 
tremely difficult to catch the perpetrators. I used 
always to have a sort of premonition as to when the 
fray would begin, but there was nothing certain. 

It occurred to me one fall that I would get at the 
leaders. The president of the sophomore class was 
a shrewd fellow not likely himself to get into trouble, 
and quite sure to direct his forces in any combat from 
a safe vantage ground. I called him in and ex- 
plained to him the whole situation, and the effect 
which hazing was having upon the growth and prog- 
ress of the University. 

" I haven't done any hazing, and I will give you 
my word that I will not personally put out any proc- 
lamations," he said quietly. 

" I believe you," I answered, " but you know very 
fully who has done the hazing, and you know equally 
well when and by whom the proclamations are to be 



THE POLITICIAN 127 

posted. You can control both; you are the recog- 
nized leader of the sophomore class. You must exer- 
cise 3'our control. If the proclamations go up this 
year, and if the hazing continues I'll hold you re- 
sponsible." He said nothing more, nor did I. The 
proclamations were not posted, and the hazing ceased, 
and in fact it was scarcely ever revived again. The 
politician killed it. I could multiply illustrations in- 
definitely to show how the recognized leaders in col- 
lege, or those real leaders who are quite as frequently 
unrecognized, have changed customs, have controlled 
difficult situations, have promulgated the loosest or 
the most rigid principles. 

The opportunity of the college politician for good 
or for evil is almost unlimited. He is a far more 
vital force in the college community, because, he is 
so often an unseen or an unrecognized force in de- 
termining the morals and the ideals of the student 
body, than is the Young Men's Christian Association, 
or the whole body of student pastors, strong and help- 
ful as the influences of these instrumentalities are. 

The college official who is held responsible for dis- 
cipline or for the control of student activities and 
who does not keep in the closest touch with college 
politicians, who does not make friends with them 
and try to understand their machinations will be 
likely to get on badly. When trouble is brewing he 
will have no premonitions; when it comes he will be 
likely to be in ignorance of its source. So long as 
he can lay a restraining, or a directing hand upon the 
college politician he has solved the most of his prob- 
lems of discipline and of student control. If trouble 



128 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

impends, he will know where to look for it ; if it fails 
he knows who is responsible and who can correct it, 
for the college politician dominates student senti- 
ments and student activities. 



THE CRIBBER 

I MIGHT as well frankly confess at the outset of 
this paper that I have seen a good deal of cribbing 
from the time I entered college to the present day, 
and I have been told of a great deal more than I 
have seen. As an undergraduate I knew men who 
never pretended to get through an examination with- 
out relying upon some subterfuge or trick or dishon- 
est aid, and who would put more time twice over upon 
the devising of a cunning complicated crib, than it 
would have taken to learn by heart the whole text 
upon which they were preparing to be examined. I 
have known other men, keen-brained and studious, 
who could have written with high credit any reason- 
able examination which the instructor might have set, 
and yet who regularly and foolishly carried a crib to 
the examination and used it. 

I remember asking a young sophomore once who 
had been caught in the act of using a crib in a final 
examination, and who was dismissed from college for 
his dishonesty, why he had done so. He was an in- 
telligent fellow, and was easily in the highest ten per 
cent, of his class. 

" It was a case of making ninety per cent, without 
the crib or ninety-five per cent, with it," he said, 
" and I was anxious to win preliminary honors." 

His manner was as cold-blooded and matter of fact 
in the discussion of the situation as a careful house- 
129 



130 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

wife might assume in swatting a persistent fly. I 
had had no experience with cribbing until I came to 
college. If the seekers after knowledge in the little 
rural community in which I lived were addicted to 
trickery and mental larceny I was happily never 
aware of it. It was something of a shock to me and 
rather a doubtful compliment when in my first col- 
lege examination the man sitting next to me asked, 
me for the solution of the third problem. When I 
hesitated not quite understanding what he really 
meant, he turned disgustedly to his nearest neighbor 
and copied the problem verbatim. I do not know 
that our college is worse than others in this respect; 
I have talked to instructors from neighboring insti- 
tutions who claim that there is no cribbing in their 
classes, and I have visited other colleges where such 
careful precautions are taken that cribbing is almost 
a physical impossibility, but in institutions in the 
j\Iiddle West organized as ours is, I am of the opinion 
that conditions do not materially differ. 

The most surprising thing to me about the man 
who cribs is the attitude which his fellow students 
assume toward him. Those of his friends who ac- 
quire their college credits in a manner similar to his 
own look upon him with real admiration. If he is 
not detected in his dishonesty, and so does not come 
to grief, he is regarded as a good sport and a shrewd 
fellow. If he is caught in his irregularity, he is 
looked on in somewhat the light of a martyr, whom 
ill-deserved misfortune has overtaken. Even the 
honest man, who minds his own affairs, writes his 
own examinations, and keeps himself absolutely 
within the bounds of integrity, is seldom affected by 



THE CRIBBER 131 

the dishonesty around him. He thinks no less of the 
cribber; the dishonest man is in no sense a pariah in 
his eyes. It is not his funeral, he says. If the man 
wants to crib, that is his business. It is a personal 
right, like chewing tobacco, or eating frogs' legs 
which no one should interfere with. If the modern 
undergraduate should have propounded to him the 
question that Cain tried to dodge in the Garden, he 
would unquestionably refuse to accept any responsi- 
bility as to his brother's conduct ; it is up to every 
man to look out for himself, he would maintain. 
Even with girls the case is not different. I have 
known the most popular and the most influential 
girls in college to crib their way through an examina- 
tion without apparent shame, who seemed to lose by 
the act nothing of their influence or of their popu- 
larity. If cribbing is common one does not lose 
caste by being guilty of it. 

I used to have the feeling that the man who cribbed 
in an examination did so because he felt that he had 
to do so — he was in a corner from which he could 
not extricate himself without resorting to some ille- 
gitimate means — I thought it was usually a matter 
of a sudden overwhelming temptation to which the 
man yielded because the pressure was more than he 
could resist. Quite the contrarv^ is usually true — 
nine-tenths of the people whom I have known to crib 
did not need to do so at all so far as passing tbe 
course in question was concerned. They cribbed be- 
cause they thought it was easier, because they did 
not like the instructor, because other people were do- 
ing it, because they thought the examination was un- 
fair, because they were pressed for time, because they 



132 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

thought they were being watched and they felt that 
it would be a good joke to outwit the proctor; and 
even when they were not caught, very few of them 
ever profited through a higher grade from the crib- 
bing. Most men who are detected in the act of crib- 
bing and who are facing discipline as a result aver 
that the time in question is the first time they have 
ever been guilty of the act. This may be from the 
fact that the man not caught the first time develops 
so much adroitness as never to be caught, or it may 
be that he has forgotten his past record. 

A man when brought face, to face with the facts 
will usually admit his guilt, especially if the facts are 
presented by a single individual. Most young women 
will at first plead innocence. The explanation lies 
probably in the fact that the man feels that he has 
less to lose by admitting guilt than does the woman, 
for, as things now are, a man's damaged reputation 
is far more easily repaired than is a woman's. 

The cribber, unless he is detected, suffers very lit- 
tle remorse. I am familiar with the class of melo- 
drama in fiction which pictures the young fellow 
guilty of crime or dishonesty racked and torn by 
the tortures of an accusing conscience ; but in fact it 
is usually only when he is in doubt as to the success 
of his subterfuge, or when he knows that he has 
been detected and that public disgrace is staring him 
in the face, that he begins to think and to suffer. 
It is wrong only if you are caught, is his philosophy. 
He excuses himself largely on the ground that the 
examination is a game, like love and war, and that 
anything one does is fair and unobjectionable which 
circumvents the instructor. When you cheat an in- 



THE CRIBBER 133 

structor, he argues, it is in the same class of virtue 
as beating a corporation or evading taxes, an overt 
act which any one admits is to be winked at. 

By cribbing, tlie student argues, he is simply beat- 
ing the college, which stands to him as a sort of un- 
feeling, overbearing despot like the railroad corpora- 
tion to the traveler. If on the other hand a fellow 
student is involved the whole situation changes. 
The cribber will usually suffer indefinitely rather 
than have a pal come to grief through his error or his 
carelessness or crudeness of work. In such an in- 
stance he is usually quite willing to suffer anything in 
order that another undergraduate may get off. 

Just a few weeks ago I had before me two sopho- 
mores who had been detected cribbing in a final ex- 
amination. They were equally guilty, and in accord- 
ance with our regular custom where there are no ex- 
tenuating circumstances, they were dismissed. The 
older of the two waited after our interview was over 
to say to me that he felt himself more to blame than 
his companion. He was older, he alleged; he should 
have set a better example. Besides the younger man, 
who was by the way in no sense a personal friend of 
his I knew, was a promising athlete. The college 
could not afford to lose him. He was anxious then, 
he said, to bear the whole punishment of the misdeed 
if by any arrangement the younger boy might go free. 
It was a generous offer which, perhaps, showed more 
truly the boy's real character than his error in con- 
duct had done, but it was one which I did not feel at 
liberty to accept. 

Another instance, also, shows the attitude which 
the cribber takes towards his fellow students. Two 



134 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

juniors had been suspected of dishonesty in an exam- 
ination and had been reported to me. One was with- 
out prominence in student affairs, the other the cap- 
tain of an athletic team counted upon to win. An 
examination of the evidence showed beyond doubt 
that one of the two men had copied from the other, 
though it was not clear which one. I discussed the 
situation with each separately, and with apparent 
frankness they told me the facts. The athlete was 
innocent, he said. The older man confessed that he 
had been the dishonest one, and was dismissed. 
Years afterward I learned that the men had talked 
the matter over before coming in to see me and had 
agreed to lie, the man of little prominence being the 
willing sacrifice in order that the craven coward ath- 
lete might be saved. It makes me angry still when 
I think of it, distorted sense of honor though it was. 
A short time ago, in order that I might better un- 
derstand the student viewpoint with respect to crib- 
bing, I prepared and sent to a selected list of four 
hundred undergraduate men, a questionnaire. The 
queries were as follows : 

1. What percentage of the members of your classes 
do you think sometimes crib ? 

2. Is this percentage larger in some kinds of 
courses than in others, as for instance, mathematics, 
rhetoric, chemistry, etc., and if so, in what kinds ? 

3. Under some kinds of instructors than under 
others, and if so, under what kinds? 

4. What form of cribbing is most common? 

5. What seems to be the most common reason or 
defense given? 

6. If you have ever cribbed what was the situation ? 



THE CRIBBER 135 

7. If you were charged with cribbing by what kind 
of committee would you prefer to be heard, — a com- 
mittee of older members of the faculty, a committee 
of younger members of the faculty chosen by the stu- 
dents, or a committee of students? Please state the 
reason of your answer. 

8. Do you think it more objectionable to receive in- 
formation than to give it? 

9. Would you volunteer information to a commit- 
tee of the faculty concerning a fellow student who to 
your knowledge had cribbed? 

10. To a student committee? 

11. Would you give information in either case if 
asked to do so ? 

12. What kind of punishment or procedure if any 
do you think is likely to be most effective in curbing 
the practice of cribbing? 

The list to whom the questionnaire was sent was 
a carefully selected one comprising members of all 
classes, representatives of all organizations, and men 
of all types and affiliations. I explained that by 
cribbing I meant to include the using of text books 
or other written helps, the receiving of help of any 
sort from other students, or the giving of help of 
any kind to such other students. Students were not 
asked to sign their names to the papers returned, and 
it was indicated that the information obtained would 
not be used in any way to the detriment of individual 
students. A large percentage of the papers were re- 
turned, and every one, so far as I remember, seemed 
to answer the questions seriously and frankly. The 
papers were " keyed " in such a way as to make it 
possible to tell which came from men living in fra- 



136 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

ternity houses and which ones from men not so affil- 
iated; other than this there was no mark upon the 
papers to identify the writers. In almost every case 
the fraternity man was more radical or more pessi- 
mistic than his independent college mate, a situation 
explainable, perhaps, from the fact that fraternity 
men, living in a somewhat more congested way than 
other men, are likely to have closer associations, to 
know more about what is actually going on among 
each other and, because of their close personal 
friendly relations, to be franker and more open in 
confessing their derelictions. 

Naturally the replies to the questions varied widely 
in specific instances, but it was interesting to see how 
closely in the main the majority of the students 
agreed. Seventy per cent, of the men admitted that 
they had cribbed at one time or another, and fifteen 
per cent, of those who sent in replies ignored the ques- 
tion. Those who affirmed that they had never them- 
selves cribbed were more optimistic with reference to 
the universality of the practice than were the others, 
though not more rigid in their suggestion as to dis- 
cipline. One man said that in attempting to dis- 
cover how widespread the practice of cribbing was he 
had made inquiry of twenty of his class-mates and 
friends, and that nineteen of the twenty admitted 
that at one time or another they had used some ille- 
gitimate method in an examination. Some of the 
men said they had never given the practice any con- 
sideration or attention, they had paid attention solely 
to their own business, had seen no one engaged in 
dishonest methods, and so had no opinion to offer. 
More than fifty per cent, of those answering, how- 



THE CRIBBER 137 

ever, were of the opinion that the practice of crib- 
bing is quite general. 

The majority were agreed that in courses, examina- 
tions in which require the memorization of a con- 
siderable number of dates, or formulae, or isolated 
facts, cribbing is more prevalent than in courses 
which admit more readily of the discussion of gen- 
eral principles. In descriptive geometry, one man 
said, he thought everybody cribbed. History, math- 
ematics, some courses in economics, and chemistry, 
it was said, are the courses in which most dishonesty 
is practiced because in examinations in these courses 
it is easier to prepare material that can be readily 
and advantageously used. 

It was generally agreed, also, that certain types of 
instructors stimulate the students to crib more than 
do others. Very little cribbing is done under the in- 
structor who treats his students fairly, who seems to 
look upon them as honest gentlemen, and who is in- 
terested in the success and progress of those he is 
teaching. 

" The most cribbing is done," one student wrote, 
" under instructors who do not play the game fairly 
with the class, who would rather than not ask ques- 
tions on an examination which they feel sure their 
students can not answer. There is more cheating un- 
der inexperienced instructors who are working for a 
higher degree, and who feel that they must fail a 
certain percentage of their students in order to give 
the impression that they are deep and efficient." 

Another man said, " The instructor who places 
confidence in his students gains their respect, and 
as a rule they treat him squarely. Students are 



138 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

proud of the fact that they have cribbed successfully 
under a man who is always watching for cribbers." 

The following quotations, also, were interesting: 
" Cribbing will be carried on more under an in- 
structor who does not get into personal touch with his 
students. The instructor who is human will have 
little trouble with cribbing." " I have heard it said 
that the sarcastic instructor who by his manner vir- 
tually says to his students, ' cheat if you dare, I bet 
I catch you,' is the one the student delights in beat- 
ing at his own game." " Cribbing is most common 
under a very strict or a very lenient instructor." 
" Any instructor who is specially sarcastic or who 
does not deal with his students in an open and 
friendly way is sure to have those in his classes who 
will try to get through in any conceivable manner." 

In reply to the question, as to the form of cribbing 
most common there was little agreement, the consult- 
ing of notes carried to class, looking on another stu- 
dent's paper, and verbal communication between stu- 
dents sitting crowded together being thought most 
common. 

More than thirty per cent, of those who replied to 
the questionnaire held that the main excuse offered 
for cribbing lay in the fact that the specific examina- 
tion in question was unfair and that examinations in 
general are in no sense an adequate test of a student's 
knowledge. If the instructor knows in the main 
what the individual student will be likely to know be- 
fore he gives him the test, why, the student asks, 
should he give him the test at all; but in asking this 
question he fails to realize that unless the examina- 
tion were given the student will not make the mental 



THE CRIBBER 139 

effort to gather together the body of facts and infor- 
mation which the instructor knows he will possess if 
the examination is given. In addition to the allega- 
tion that unfair examinations induce cribbing, the 
justification of the practice, in order of frequency 
presented, are fear of failing the course, ignorance of 
the points in question, and the fact that other people 
do the same thing. I once heard a man claim that 
the reason he had never honestly scheduled his prop- 
erty with the tax collector was because his neighbors 
never did. If he scheduled his property honestly, he 
claimed, when his neighbors withheld a large part of 
their possessions, he would pay more than his just 
share of taxes. The cribber argues similarly : he can 
not afford to be honest, for when his companion 
cheats the honest man suffers in comparison for his 
honesty, and that he is not willing to do. Besides 
evading the responsibility for personal integrity, he 
argues from a false premise in taking for granted 
that the man who cribs by so doing increases his 
scholastic average. I believe it could be proved, if 
it were possible to get at the real facts, that the crib- 
ber very seldom profits scholastically from his trick- 
ery. The excuses which the men offer for their de- 
linquencies were varied, but I think no one really 
tried to justify himself. The excuses were all simply 
subterfuges to ease their consciences and in no case 
deceived even the men who offered them. 

With reference to the tribunal before which they 
were to be heard if charged with cribbing, by far the 
larger number were in favor of a committee com- 
posed of older members of the faculty, the reasons 
given being that the judgment of such a committee 



140 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

would be saner, the experience of the men broader, 
and that their decisions would be tempered with a 
finer quality of mercy. Those who preferred to be 
judged by the younger men were of the opinion that 
such men, whether students or members of the fac- 
ulty, would be more lenient and, because they were 
still concerned with undergraduate problems or were 
so slightly removed from them, would understand 
and sympathize more fully with the student in 
trouble than would the older man. So far as actual 
justice was concerned they were nearly all convinced 
that the older men would the more completely at- 
tain this end in their decisions, but they thought 
the guilty would get off with a lighter penalty the 
younger the judges were. This last conclusion was 
the more interesting to me in view of the fact that 
through my personal associations with various men 
on disciplinary committees over a period of several 
years, I have found almost invariably that the under- 
graduate and the younger member of the faculty is 
likely to be harsher and more severe in his judgments 
of men found guilty of dishonesty when it is put up 
to them to impose a penalty than is the older and 
more experienced man. 

Seventy per cent, of those answering the questions 
thought it more objectionable to receive help than to 
give it, though the arguments advanced to justify 
this point of view were few and frail. Seven per 
cent, did not answer the question. One man asserted 
that it was impossible to refuse to give help when 
asked without being more of a mart3T to honorable 
ideals than most college men are willing to be. " Un- 
der our present moral code," another man says, " a 



THE CRIBBER 141 

man who is asked for aid has to run the risk of pop- 
ular dislike if he refuses to give it. This a student 
does not feel like taking upon himself." On the 
other side a third student says, " There is no differ- 
ence between receiving and giving aid. If I give 
opium to a dope fiend, I am no better than he; if 
I am a servant and give a burglar the key to my em- 
ployer's house, I am no better than the burglar; if I 
supply a fellow student with information to copy, I 
am as bad as he is, because I help him to be dishon- 
est." 

There was little difference expressed by the men in 
their willingness to volunteer information with ref- 
erence to cribbing, whether the committee in charge 
of discipline were composed of students or members 
of the faculty. In each case about eighty-five per 
cent, of the men said they would not volunteer infor- 
mation under any circumstances, three per cent, did 
not answer the question, and the remainder were will- 
ing to give information if the conditions under which 
it were given were made sufficiently innocuous. 
There was a pretty general lack of feeling of respon- 
sibility suggested by the replies. The condition of 
affairs was possibly to be regretted, they admitted, 
but when at the end of the semester a student is 
pushed into a corner by a heartless instructor who en- 
dangers his intellectual life, what is to be done? It 
is hardly to be thought of that the suffering under- 
graduate should be still further set upon by his class- 
mates in an attempt to beat the truth out of him, 
but rather, if opportunity is afforded, that they 
should run to his assistance. So strongly are some 
of the illogical arguments presented that one is al- 



142 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

most persuaded for the moment that not only is hon- 
esty not the best policy, but that in reality it is no 
policy at all. 

The most frequently emphasized suggestion for 
improving conditions was to do away with final ex- 
aminations entirely and depend upon weekly quizzes, 
or to make the questions asked so general as to ren- 
der a crib useless or unnecessary. In making these 
suggestions the writers ignored the fact that there is 
quite as much cribbing done on daily work and 
weekly quizzes as there is on final examinations, and 
that by laying the emphasis upon these methods of 
testing a student's work they simply shift the danger 
point or get from the frying pan into the fire. The 
honor system, more careful proctoring, and the sepa- 
ration of students so widely at examination time that 
communication is practically impossible were also 
suggested as methods of cutting down cribbing, 
though the opinion was expressed by many that no 
method could be devised which would wholly banish 
the practice. Expulsion, suspension, failure of the 
course, public confession, and reprimand, loss of gen- 
eral college credit, and the giving of the widest pub- 
licity to the offense and the offender were among the 
remedies suggested for reducing the amount of crib- 
bing. Perhaps one of the most sensible suggestions 
was that students known to be guilty of cribbing 
should be permanently barred from participation in 
college activities. From my experience with stu- 
dents and from my knowledge of the importance 
which they attribute to participation in college activi- 
ties, I am sure that many a student would prefer to 



THE CRIBBER 143 

be dismissed from college than to be prohibited for 
any length of time from participation in activities. 

" Abolishing specific numerical grades," one man 
suggests, " would take away from many students a 
strong temptation to crib. Those who desire to ex- 
cel are, under a system of numerical grades, often 
influenced to crib in order that they may take in- 
tellectual precedence of their classmates. If spe- 
cific grades were done away with, this condition 
would not exist." 

Anotlier man writes, " I do not believe that a uni- 
versity is a place to begin the primary teaching of 
honesty. A man's habits and principles are formed 
when he comes to college. A young fellow should 
be educated in principles of honesty in the home 
and in the graded schools. If he has not learned 
these before he comes to college he is entitled to no 
leniency. No one should be given a degree from a 
university who has grossly cribbed." 

The attitude toward the practice in most of the 
papers was one of indifference or of justification. 
Especially in discussing the subject of giving help 
to a classmate in trouble was the moral sense of the 
writers dull. Instead of looking upon such a prac- 
tice as objectionable there was the almost universal 
tendency to condone it or even to recognize it is a 
virtue. The fellow who would not help a classmate 
in need of information in an examination when he 
was politely asked for it was without heart a great 
number felt, and lacking in the proper brotherly 
spirit. 

No other problem of student life has given me so 



144 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

much concern as the problem of cribbing and the crib- 
ber. I believe sincerely, as one yonng fellow said, 
that if the freshman entering college could come into 
an atmosphere where cribbing was not tolerated and 
where the man who was seen to crib or was known to 
crib lost caste and was looked upon with disfavor 
he would be given a respect for truth and honesty 
which would be of incalculable value to him through- 
out life. If a man could live for four years among 
students who looked down upon dishonesty of every 
sort, the experience and the training would be of as 
great value to him as anything the college could 
teach him. 

The man who cribs is lacking a true sense of hon- 
esty, and the companion who helps him is impelled 
by a false sense of honor. Leaving out of consid- 
eration the questions of the morality of the practice, 
which is perhaps the main question, but which un- 
fortunately will be likely last to appeal to the under- 
graduate, the question of expediency comes in. By 
cribbing the student weakens himself, robs himself of 
training, lessens his self-reliance, and so reduces the 
probability of his success. The cribber comes in most 
cases not to depend upon his own strength and judg- 
ment. WTien he strikes a hard problem, when he gets 
into a corner, when he meets intellectual difficulty, 
his courage fails him, and he calls at once lustily for 
help. And it is the self-reliant man, who can mar- 
shall all his powers and be sure of them, not the man 
who is always looking for help, who is wanted in 
every business. If a student in mathematics allows 
some one to work his home problems for him and 
then cribs from his neighbor in the final examina- 



THE CRIBBER 145 

tion, what does he expect to do after he leaves college 
when the questions which involve such mathematical 
computations are before him for solution? There 
very likely will be no one to work them out for him 
and no friendly neighbor engaged with the same 
difficulties from whom he may crib. He has followed 
a practice in college which has left him helpless after 
he is out. 

A young chemist whom I once knew, whose college 
work required the analysis of a rather large number 
of unknowns, by chance happened upon the table of 
results which had been worked out by the instructor 
and by skillfully changing his own results slightly 
so that they might be within the percentage of varia- 
tion and error allowed, was able to meet the require- 
ments of the course without really going through any 
of the work. He was detected and dismissed, but 
even if he had been clever enough to carry out his in- 
tentions he would ultimately have been the loser, be- 
cause he would have lacked the training and the ex- 
perience to pursue the calling for which he was pre- 
paring. The cribber does not think of the future; 
he is concerned wholly with the present safety of his 
skin. 

" But one has to get through some way," a cribber 
said to me by way of excuse for the dereliction in 
which he had been detected. 

" How about the influence of this upon your gen- 
eral character ? " I asked. 

"You don't think that because I wasn't square on 
this measley little examination I would lie or steal 
or cheat my employer, do you ? " 

" Why, yes," I replied ; " I think you are much 



146 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

more likely to do so. If you are tricky and shifty 
and dishonest with one man, even if he happens to 
be only your instructor, the chances are that you will 
find it more difficult to be entirely above board with 
other men even though the relationship which you 
stand in to them is a different one." 

The cribber is, then, not quite so safe a man to 
trust, his principles of integrity are not so solidly 
grounded, his standards of honesty are somewhat 
more flexible; he does not quite ring true. He 
would pick up a needed umbrella with fewer com- 
punctions of conscience than others of his mates; he 
would repay a small loan with more reluctance; he 
would borrow your clothing, or your stationery, or 
your stamps with less elaborate ceremonies than the 
really honest man and would be among the last to 
return them. He has a treacherous memory with 
reference to other things than dates and formulae 
and details. The irregularity of which he is guilty 
is in many cases, I am quite willing to admit, a venial 
one, but it leaves his character a little soiled. The 
lowering influence, also, which such an act on the 
part of an upper-classman or of a leading man in 
college has upon a student just entering is incal- 
culable. 

" How can you expect us to be honest ? " a fresh- 
man asked me last year. " It is true the upper-class- 
men in our house warn us constantly against crib- 
bing, but it is not because they feel that it is wrong. 
They simply think that we are not yet wise and clever 
enough to get by with it ; they are afraid we shall be 
caught and that they will be annoyed by the disgrace 
of the exposure. We know all the time that they crib 



THE CRIBBER 147 

even while they are warning us against the dangers 
of it, and we are stimulated to try it ourselves, rather 
than restrained by their warnings." 

The cribber, if he is successful, is likely to be a 
grafter. Having managed to get something for 
nothing, or to suppose that he has done so in his 
intellectual relationshpis, he is not satisfied until he 
takes a hand in activities, and when he gets into ac- 
tivities he is not there for his health alone, nor for 
the public recognition, or honor which may accrue. 
He is out for the loot. It is easy for him to argue 
that since he is entitled to some compensation for the 
services, real or imagined, which he has performed, it 
is quite unobjectionable for him to pay himself, since 
the red tape to be unwound, if he should seek re- 
muneration in the regular way, is often tiresomely 
complicated, and the possibility of his getting any- 
thing at all is distressingly remote. He is an advo- 
cate of efficiency and uses a short-cut method by ap- 
propriating what he considers himself entitled to 
and salves his conscience, if it gives any indication of 
activity, by saying that they all do it anyway, and if 
he doesn't take the money some one else will. 

All this is a sad preparation for good citizenship. 
If a young man can be depended upon to do the hon- 
est thing only when it is easy, only when all other 
men are known to be honest, only when it is to his 
personal and financial advantage to be so, he is little 
fitted for responsibility and service, and yet such 
conditions are quite in accord with the doctrines of 
the man who cribs. 

I was in conversation, not long ago, with a busi- 
ness man who held a position of the greatest prorai- 



148 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

nence and trust in one of the largest corporations of 
the Middle West. He confessed to me that he had 
had little education and training as a boy before he 
became a part of the business. What he knew he had 
acquired through practical experience, through hard 
knocks, through willingness to work, and what he had 
accomplished he had done without influence or pull. 

" How does it come, then," I asked, " that you 
have been placed in so prominent a position at so 
early an age ? " for he was still a comparatively young 
man. 

" There is but one reason," he replied. " I have 
a single virtue. I proved myself to the company by 
many tests to be absolutely honest. It is that qual- 
ity which gave me my position, and it is through that 
quality that I hold it." I told the story later to a 
cribber. 

There is one solution, it seems to me, to the dif- 
ficulty, one cure for the evil of cribbing, — the crea- 
tion of a strong healthy student sentiment against it. 
Eigid discipline will help, but it will not wipe out the 
evil. Whatever discipline is enforced must appeal 
to the good judgment of the better class of students 
as just. Whenever in the minds of the body of un- 
dergraduates the character of the discipline enforced 
by the faculty seems cruel or over-severe, one of the 
main purposes of discipline, the deterring of mis- 
deeds, is lost ; for the student who is thought to have 
been disciplined too severely becomes at once, in the 
minds of his friends and companions, a martyr to be 
sympathized with and pitied and made a hero of. 
When such a condition arises the evil is rather likely 
to increase than to lessen. 



THE CRIBBER 149 

The evil of cribbing would be far more easily con- 
trolled and the cribber more rajjidly eliminated if 
the members of the faculty were as a whole alert and 
helpful. In fact many of them are indifferent, and 
Tnany more are asleep. They are in most cases, I am 
sorry to say, as indifferent to the situation as is the 
undergraduate himself. 

" If my students want to crib in my classes," I 
often hear an instructor say, "they may; it isn't up 
to me to act as a spy and a policeman over them. If 
they do crib, I should rather not see them, and even 
when I might be led to suspect that they were do- 
ing so, I prefer to think well of them, and to treat 
them as if they were gentlemen." And no one better 
than the student knows exactly how the individual in- 
structor feels about these matters, and no one thing 
is more potent in helping to confirm him in the habit 
of cribbing than this same indifference on the part 
of his instructors. 

" You can't tell me that ' Bobby ' doesn't know 
about that cribbing that goes on in his class," a 
junior said. " He's too sly a dog not to get onto a 
practice that is as open as cribbing in his class. He 
doesn't want the trouble or the unpopularity that 
would result if he reported the men, and so he pre- 
fers not to see what is going on." But in refusing 
to see it he lost the respect even of those who were 
cribbing under him, and indirectly encouraged one 
of the most vicious practices in college. A good 
many members of the faculty feel that their honor 
has been compromised when they report a man sus- 
pected of cribbing and those in charge of disciplinary 
matters do not find him guilty. 



150 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

'"' I shall never report a man again for dishonesty," 
an instructor old enough to have more sense, said to 
me not long ago. 

"Why?" I asked. 

"Because I reported Hanley last year, and the 
committee let him go." 

" But there was no convincing evidence that he 
had cribbed," I protested. 

" Perhaps not," he admitted, " but the whole affair 
put me into a very embarrassing position, and such a 
position as I don't propose to get into again soon. If 
my men want to crib I'll flunk them or ignore the 
fact." 

Another class of instructors refuses to take any 
responsibility for the cribber because they allege that 
when he is caught the penalty imposed is not to their 
liking. One man says that he will report no more 
men who are dishonest because the penalty of dismis- 
sal for half a year or longer, which we ordinarily im- 
pose upon men above the freshmen year, is too se- 
vere. He prefers, he says, to handle his own cases, 
which means that it pleases him best to pay no atten- 
tion to them, or to delude himself into the belief that 
there are none. Another instructor refuses to talce 
the subject of cribbing seriously because from his 
point of view the penalty imposed upon the guilty 
ones is a joke. He would expel or behead every man 
guilty of the slightest deviation from the path of in- 
tegrity. Thus both the conservative and the radical 
indirectly helps to confirm the student in his habit of 
irregularity. 

The type of instructor who by his manner virtu- 
ally gives 8 challenge to his students to crib regu- 



THE CRIBBER 151 

larly helps in the practice. When you tell a student 
that you are so clever that you will be quite willing 
to have him fool you if he can, you have given him 
a dare, and his brain at once begins to work in a de- 
termination to outwit you. The instructor in whose 
classes there are more cribbers than in any other I 
know is the one who alleges that he takes nobody's 
word, and who announces that if any undergraduate 
cribs in his class he will find it necessary to get up 
pretty early in the morning. If instructors would 
be less indifferent, if they would use more common 
sense, and if they would report for discipline all 
students who are detected cribbing, the number of 
cribbers would be materially lessened. 

The cribber could be discouraged if more precau- 
tions were taken in the conduct of examinations. No 
one can deny that, when we take into consideration 
what hangs upon the result of the test, the temptation 
to dishonesty in final examinations is not small. N"o 
faculty, therefore, it seems to me, can possibly jus- 
tify itself until it makes the conditions under which 
examinations are given as thoroughly as possible con- 
ducive to honesty. With a little care in any institu- 
tion the student undergoing examination could be so 
situated that even if it were not impossible for him to 
cheat, it would at least be difficult. As it is now in 
many institutions, the undergraduates at examination 
time are so crowded together that it is almost impos- 
sible for them to be honest if they desire to be. Stu- 
dents using the same questions are sitting elbow 
to elbow. If they look around it is easy to see what 
the man on each side and in front of them is writ- 
ing, and communication by word of mouth or by 



152 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

means of notes passed is as easy and free as talk at an 
afternoon tea. The instructor usually looks on in- 
differently, engaged in reading the newspaper or in 
the solution of some of his own intellectual or domes- 
tice difficulties, or he quite as likely strolls out of 
the room entirely to do an errand for his wife, or to 
get a breath of air for his health. There is no ade- 
quate supervision, no adequate proetoring. The 
students are not on their honor, and they know they 
are not, and even if the instructor announced that 
they were, they would seldom accept the announce- 
ment as authentic since it had been made without 
discussion with them and without their consent. 
The honor system would help, but it would be worse 
than useless unless it were backed strongly by student 
sentiment. If three-fourths of the student body were 
of the opinion that the practice of cribbing is wronn;, 
that it should go, and that they are not only williiig 
not to crib themselves but that they will report every 
man who is known to crib, the practice would soon 
be upon its last legs. It is not so difficult to interest 
a considerable number of students to the extent that 
they will agree to honesty of procedure themselves, 
but it is altogether another matter when it comes to 
their assuming responsibility for the conduct of 
others. " I would myself agree not to crib," students 
say to me over and over again, " but I would not 
report a man whom I saw crib or even talk to him 
about the matter." But this, it seems to me, is the 
logical solution of the whole matter — student senti- 
ment and student responsibility. So long as crib- 
bing is an affair between faculty and students it may 
be ameliorated, but it will never be fully cured. It 



THE CRIBBER 153 

is only when the student loses favor or standing or 
caste with his mates through dishonesty that he will 
take the matter of cribbing seriously. A student 
can stand anything else better than to be distrusted 
or disliked by his own undergraduate associates. 

Not long ago we had in control of our student 
paper one who could find little to approve of in 
our university organization and control. Everything 
was wrong: the system of teaching, the development 
of research, the construction of buildings, the super- 
vision of student activities, the general attitude and 
composition of the faculty, were all hopelessly and ir- 
revocably wrong. He stirred a good deal of feeling 
among the authorities, he irritated and offended 
scores of our faculty, but the more opposition he 
aroused the better he liked it, for it gave him the 
feeling of a reformer. He had a considerable follow- 
ing of undergraduate sympathizers, he won the ap- 
proval of a certain number of instructors who were 
glad to have him voice the sentiments that they might 
have been afraid themselves to utter, and he did not 
care a picayune what the administration thought of 
him. But one day he entered upon another field. 
Delighted with his success as a stirrer up of trouble 
among the faculty, he began a heavy onslaught upon 
a disreputable student practice. He was somewhat 
surprised on the day following the appearance of his 
editorial to find that his old friends were not so cor- 
dial ; his fonner acquaintances looked at him coldly 
as they passed him or crossed to the other side of the 
street to avoid meeting him ; the cold shoulder was 
given him wherever he went. It was all right to crit- 
icize the faculty; the criticism of their own personal 



154 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

derelictions and evasions of duty did not take so 
kindly with his undergraduate friends. He never 
wrote another editorial on the tabooed subject, for he 
could not stand the unpopularity which such writing 
brought him; he did not have the courage to go 
against public sentiment as expressed by his asso- 
ciates. 

So cribbing and the cribber will go when the crib- 
ber losing social standing, is not looked upon with 
favor, is not regarded as a gentleman. So long as 
undergraduate sentiment toward this sort of dishon- 
esty is indifferent or tends to condone it, the practice 
will continue. General student sentiment against 
the man who practices dishonesty in his college work 
would cause him to disappear over night. 



THE ATHLETE 

For many a generation past the athlete has been 
the undergraduate idol, the big man in college, the 
god whom the incoming freshman worshiped and 
to whose attributes and accomplishments he hoped 
through physical tribulations to attain. There may 
have been a time, when our great grandfathers were 
in college, that the orator or the scholar was most 
envied and emulated by the ambitious undergradu- 
ate, but, if so, that time is long past. The student 
crowd will go wild over a successful athlete, shout- 
ing themselves hoarse in proclaiming his excellencies, 
and fighting like demons to get a chance to carry him 
off the field. No one molests the orator or the 
scholar or follows him down the street with an ova- 
tion. They have an unobstructed path from the 
scene of their accomplishments to their lodging 
houses. 

Don't misunderstand me: I am in no sense ad- 
vocating or defending this condition of affairs ; I am 
simply making a conservative statement of facts. 
Scholarship may be and should be the goal toward 
which the ambitious undergraduate in general is 
struggling, but physical strength and physical accom- 
plishment is in reality what youth most admires. 
We might as well recognize and acknowledge the fact, 
change it if we can, and become resigned to it if we 
must. 

155 



156 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

We had for many years at the University of Illi- 
nois, permitted — I scarcely dare to say approved — 
lay the faculty, an underclass contest or " scrap " 
which took place early in the fall and which fur- 
nished an outlet for the class feeling and class rivalry 
which has been extant in colleges between freshman 
and sophomore classes from time immemorial. The 
contest took on various forms during the twenty-five 
years or more of its continuance. It was always a 
test of physical strength, directed at rare intervals by 
some little brains; it was rough, not without danger, 
and occasionally to the onlooker it presented strong 
symptoms of brutality, though I believe, through the 
providence which is said to watch carefully over fools 
and children, no contestant was ever seriously hurt. 
Ultimately through the influence of certain members 
of our faculty, nervous or soft-hearted, the contest 
was barred. The main arguments against it were the 
danger involved, the fact that such a contest was un- 
dignified and out of keeping with the character of col- 
lege gentlemen, and most strongly urged, perhaps, 
was the argument that our college man of to-day is 
more refined, more intellectual, and less given to 
rough boisterous sport than was true a generation or 
two ago. I may be pardoned, I hope, if I decline 
to believe this statement. The young college man of 
to-day is in many respects as barbaric as he was a 
hundred years ago, he is just as fond of a fight, just 
as much an admirer of physical strength and physical 
contests as he ever was, and that is why the athlete is 
going to continue to be for the growing youth a hero, 
and in college the pferson to be most admired and 
emulated. 



THE ATHLETE 157 

The athlete in college was not always so worthy of 
emulation as he is at present. I do not have to go 
back farther than my own college days nor even so 
far as that to recall instances of men who found their 
way into colleges for the sole purpose of developing 
or exhibiting their physical powers, of making an 
athletic team, and without any intention of adding to 
their intellectual strength. Mr. George Ade's crude 
young Hercules in the " College Widow " whose 
ostensible purpose in entering college was the study 
of art but whose real object was to help make a win- 
ning football team, might find a counterpart in many 
another college. I myself can recall a big hulk of 
human bull who had been employed about town in 
driving an ice wagon and who was drafted by a few 
local enthusiasts to enter college in order that he 
might play center on the football team. He was a 
crudely impossible yokel, and unfortunately of little 
use, for he had no brains to manage his brawn, and 
proved more of a hindrance than a help. Such pro- 
ceedings as his are happily at an end in self-respect- 
ing colleges, and the athlete of to-day is a very dif- 
ferent character morally and scholastically than he 
once was. For membership on one of the Middle- 
West conference teams, at least, a man must be a 
bona-fide student, must be in good standing, and 
must have carried a full year's college work in the 
institution which he wishes to represent. Our own 
athletes for years have maintained a scholastic stand- 
ing considerably above that of the average man in 
college and in many cases, in fact proportionately in 
quite as many cases as the men not in athletics, have 
attained a standing which has entitled them to elec- 



158 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

tion to such honorary organizations as Phi Beta 
Kappa, Sigma Xi, and Tau Beta Pi. In conference 
colleges the athlete as a class is not a flunker, for 
when he becomes a flunker he can no longer represent 
his college as an athlete. No more is he satisfied 
merely to pass, for he has been taught that intellect- 
ually, at least, a miss is not nearly so good as a mile, 
and that his physical safety lies in making his intel- 
lectual calling absolutely sure. 

The athlete is the best known man in college. The 
man who made high scholastic average for the year is 
occasionally pointed out; the editor of the college 
daily, or the student colonel of the cadet regiment 
may swagger a little as he walks across the campus ; 
the fellow who took the role of leading lady at the 
spring performance of the Union opera may cause a 
few admirers to crane tlieir necks as he passes, but 
every one knows the athlete. When " Shorty " 
Eighter made three home runs in the last baseball 
game with Chicago and settled the conference cham- 
pionship for that year, he was a bigger man in the 
eyes of the undergraduates than if he had been presi- 
dent of the steel trust or Ambassador to the court of 
St. James. There wasn't any one in the country, 
they were quite convinced, who had anything on 
" Shorty." 

The athlete sometimes excuses his too vigorous par- 
ticipation in physical affairs to the consequent detri- 
ment of his studies on the ground that it is for the 
good of the college — it is all for the love of Alma 
Mater. There is very little to such talk. The real 
athlete is such from pure love of it. He longs for a 
fight; he enjoys being in a contest; he is overflowing 



THE ATHLETE 159 

with strength and animal spirits ; it gives him 
pleasure to win, and if through his winning Alma 
Mater gets an incidental mention he is not annoyed. 
Few athletes consider the time they put in in practice 
or the punishment they receive in a game as a sac- 
rifice; the joy of contest and of victory more than 
outweighs all the sacrifice and pain endured. If 
there is doubt of this in any one's mind let him watch 
the successful athlete as he looks over the sporting 
sheet of the Sunday paper following a successful game 
or meet and reads his own eulogy and sees his own 
photograph ; there is very little thought of Alma 
Mater in his mind at such a time. 

Because he is so well known, there is no one else in 
college whose daily life is so much under observation, 
whose habits and ideals and accomplishments are so 
much discussed and whose dicta count so much in 
setting the standards for the college community. 
What the athlete thinks and does determines what is 
right ; what he says settles a matter for all time. He 
can quell a riot or stop an objectionable undergrad- 
uate practice with a word, if he will. He is often so 
harassed by the severe exactions of his athletic train- 
ing and by the necessity, under this training, of keep- 
ing up his college work, that he has little time for 
leadership in any active way, and though he stands 
out in a notable manner as an example which the 
students in general are likely and willing to follow, 
he usually makes a poor chairman of a committee, an 
indifferent president of an organization, and a not 
very active member of anything that requires aggres- 
sive leadership. He takes the popularity, and the 
prominence, and the adulation, but he side-steps the 



160 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

responsibility which this prominence brings him. I 
have known a number of athletes who were elected 
president of the Young Men's Christian Association, 
but I do not now recall one who was any good in the 
office ; as class officers and as presidents of student or- 
ganizations they have pretty generally been figure- 
heads, put into office for advertising purposes only, 
as prominent men in real life sometimes lend their 
names to the furtherance of some enterprise or to the 
advertising of some nostrum in which they have little 
real interest. 

There are exceptions, of course, many of them, 
and one I recall which is a joy to remember. He was 
a big husky guard on the football team who made 
Tau Beta Pi and who was elected president of his 
fraternity and who really was president after he was 
elected. He counseled the freshmen like a father, 
and they adored him. He was a veritable D'Arta- 
gnan in leadership ; he set all the fellows an example 
in conduct and morality and scholarship that they 
never forgot. 

On account of liis popularity, also, there is no man 
who can so easily be elected to office as the athlete. 
His prestige carries him through; what he has done 
to win athletic prominence for the college, his fol- 
lowers argue, entitles him to the reward of the office 
he seeks, and forgetting that his other duties are al- 
ready a tax upon his time and his strength, he yields 
to his ambition and to the insistence of his friends. 
I have wished over and over again that he might have 
had the strength to decline when he was urged, for 
he seldom assumes seriously the responsibilities of his 
office. It would be better usually for all concerned if 



THE ATHLETE 161 

he would be satisfied to stay in his own field and trail 
along in second place when it comes to politics. 

The successful athlete as a student in these days 
has much to commend him. Of course there is the 
man who is in college primarily for athletics, who is 
satisfied merely to pass, who has no intellectual am- 
bitions, and Avho is willing by any unscrupulous 
methods to get by. He cares very little how his work 
is done just so he passes. Such a man, however, is 
not now common, and he seldom lasts through the 
college course ; somebody gets wise to his methods and 
he passes on. One such man, whose work was in 
pretty serious condition, wrote me not long ago. He 
was anxious that by some act of providence or the fac- 
ulty he might be made eligible, and when I assured 
him that this was impossible he replied, " Of course 
there would be no use of my returning to college if I 
could not take part in athletics." I felt the same 
way as he did about it, and suggested that he go to 
work. It is not of this sort but of the normal man in 
college of whom I am speaking, who is seriously and 
honestly preparing himself for the business or profes- 
sion of life, and who considers athletics a secondary 
matter. The student who would be an athlete learns 
first of all that if he would keep up his studies and 
not neglect his athletic training he has little time to 
waste; if he would succeed he must learn concentra- 
tion, he must utilize every available minute. He 
learns to get his lessons during the vacant hours of 
the day; he knows that when he comes in at night 
from practice tired and sore, that he can not afford to 
loaf much after dinner or to let his mind wander 
when he gets at his books. He will grow sleepy early 



162 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

in the evening from exhaustion, and if he is to be 
alert and fresh the next day he must get to bed soon. 
All this, if he is wise, and he often is, teaches him 
some of the most valuable lessons he can learn in col- 
lege — the value of concentration and the value of 
utilizing his spare hours, and these lessons are val- 
uable not only during his undergraduate days but 
immeasurably more so when he gets out of college 
into the more trying and strenuous work of life. 

More and more the athlete is learning the value of 
self-control and morality. The young fellow in 
training learns to control his temper, for he finds 
often that when he loses control of his temper he 
loses control of himself. He learns, too, to take ad- 
verse criticism without being offended by it, for he 
soon sees that to take offense gets him nowhere. He 
learns not to expect praise for work well done, but 
to be pleased if his efforts do not bring upon him a 
storm of criticism and reproach. The hard physical 
exercise which the man in training gets, helps him in 
the control of his physical passions; if a man wants 
to live a decent clean moral life, he will find that the 
strenuous exercise he gets in the development of ath- 
letic ability will help him toward this end more than 
almost anything else. The man, on the other hand, 
whose moral ideals might not be otherwise high, is 
not infrequently led to see tliat he must choose be- 
tween a self-controlled, temperate, clean life and fail- 
ure to accomplish his highest possibilities in athletics. 
In all my experience with undergraduates I have seen 
few things that would act more vigorously as a dis- 
courager of immoral practices than an ambition for 
success in athletics, I have seen over and over again 



THE ATHLETE 163 

the loose dissipated habits of a young fellow changed 
completely because he developed a desire for athletic 
success and was willing to learn self-repression and 
self-control in order to attain his desire. The ath- 
lete, too, who might have a tendency to break training 
or to yield to the temptation to immoral practices is 
frequently held somewhat in restraint by public opin- 
ion as expressed by the undergraduate crowd. The 
athlete who would risk the success of his team by 
indulging in dissipations of any sort would soon find 
himself, in most college communities, pretty thor- 
oughly in disfavor. Very few of us realize, I im- 
agine, just what part this fear of public opinion has 
played in our own individual cases in keeping us in 
the straight moral path ; sometimes when we should 
be inclined to hold that it was our staunch principles 
which held us back, it was quite as likely the fear of 
what the neighbors would say if they should find out 
our irregularities. We say, often, that we don't care 
what people think of us, but when we say it we are 
Joking. 

The training which the athlete gets is not advan- 
tageous merely from a physical standpoint ; I have 
many times been convinced that it is least valuable 
from such a standpoint, because the college athlete 
is not infrequently overtrained, and when he gets out 
of college and relaxes this training he finds himself 
in a critical if not in a dangerous condition. The 
chief advantage that accrues from athletic training is 
its effect upon the man's judgment and upon his char- 
acter. The man wanting to make an athletic team in 
a big university can not afford to yield easily to dis- 
couragement ; if he does he will never make the team. 



164 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

He has a score of men working for the same place, 
often, many of them more experienced and better 
trained than himself. Success often means years of 
persistent practice with one failure after another. 
Other things being equal, it is the man who sticks 
who ultimately succeeds. 

I recall a slender green country boy who came up 
to college from southern Illinois. He had the am- 
bition to do the pole vault, but it seemed at first 
little more than an ambition. He came out for prac- 
tice every day during his freshman year, but his ac- 
complishments were rather commonplace. " Plucky 
little sinner," the coach commented, but that seemed 
about as far as it went. He might keep on the 
squad; that was about all. He stuck to it through 
the sophomore year, gaining form and making grad- 
ual progress, but he was still far below the best in his 
attainments. Most fellows would have dropped out 
and taken a place among the rooters on the side 
lines. 

" I really believe Gordon is improving," the coach 
ventured to remark during the boy's junior year when 
he was still sticking to his regular practice. " We 
may hear from him yet." And we did; for he took 
second place in the spring meet in his Junior year, 
and when he was a senior he won first place in the 
Western Conference. He had learned what it means 
to laugh in the face of defeat and to push on to the 
accomplishment of an ambition, and he had set an ex- 
ample of persistence and grit to his college mates 
which is still a campus tradition. The lesson which 
he had learned of sticking to a difficult job until it is 
accomplished, no matter how long it takes, has shown 



THE ATHLETE 165 

itself in the way in which he has fought difficulties 
since he left college, and in the way in which he has 
climbed steadily to success. Whenever a boy balks at 
a difficult task or begins to lose confidence in his abil- 
ity to make good, I tell him of Gordon. 

Dinwiddle had two ambitions when he came to col- 
lege ; one was to become a good engineer and the 
other was to make the baseball team. He got a good 
room overlooking the athletic field so that he could 
get the inspiration from seeing other athletes out 
practicing, and would need to waste little time in 
getting into the game when his turn came. He had 
a good mind, and he was not afraid of work, so that 
there seemed very little difficulty in the accomplish- 
ment of his first ambition, but the second was not so 
easy to attain. He had been the star player in the 
little country town from which he came, it is true, 
but that is a very different matter from playing left 
field on the varsity. He went out on the first cut 
from the squad in liis freshman year, but he kept on 
with his practice with his class team and with his 
fraternity nine. He hung on a little longer in his 
sophomore year. 

" Give it up, kid, and try croquet," some of his 
pessimistic friends suggested; but he had no inten- 
tion of giving it up; it was one of the things for 
which he had come to college, and he was not going 
to be turned from his purpose. During his junior 
year he was kept on the squad during the season, but 
he got no active participation in the game; all his 
rivals for the position which he wanted to play 
seemed just a trifle better than he, and he sat silently 
on the bench all season, waiting eagerly to be called 



166 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

out. All this time he studied the game, he listened 
to the suggestions of the coach, and he kept up his 
practice religiously throughout the spring and sum- 
mer. When the men were called out for practice in 
his senior year he seemed to have got his batting eye. 

"You'll make it, Mark," the coach told him en- 
couragingly, ''^if you keep up that gait," and Mark 
did make it. 

Would any one hold that this persistence, this re- 
fusal to accept defeat, this willingness to work and 
to accept criticism through one season and another 
without apparent hope of success did not have its 
effects upon the characters of these men, and does 
not have its effect upon all men who submit to it? 

In addition to this refusal to accept defeat which 
becomes a part of the character of a real athlete, is 
the training in judgment and quick decision which a 
man gets. The athlete has little time to decide on 
his play in any game. He must gauge a ball, or de- 
termine upon a play instantly and his decision must 
be right or he will endanger or lose the game. He 
can not stand round looking for a hole in the line ; he 
must be through it the instant he has discovered the 
weak spot. He must solve his opponents' play al- 
most before it is made and must learn at the same 
time to assist his fellow players in the work which 
they are doing. He is trained in accuracy, in alert- 
ness of mind, in quick decisions. He can not give up 
when he is tired, he can not fall out when he is hurt, 
he must fight the game through to a finish with spirit 
and enthusiasm. Four years of this sort of training, 
I am convinced, leaves an ineffaceable stamp upon 
a young fellow's character and is seen in his business 



THE ATHLETE 167 

methods in after life. It was a very significant fact 
to me that more than ninety-five per cent, of our 
athletes who were in attendance at the various Reserve 
Officers' training camps of the country in preparation 
for the war, ^ec^.ived commissions at the close of the 
camps. They had learned to follow directions, to 
obey, and to fight. 

There is of course an element of danger in most 
strenuous athletic games, and this danger is often the 
cause of a great deal of parental opposition to a boy's 
going into such athletic games, but there is danger in 
almost any activity that is worth while. A friend of 
mine in 1917, was talking with a young fellow who 
had just enlisted in the army and was preparing to go 
to France. 

" Doesn't it frighten you terribly," she asked, " to 
think of the danger of your being killed?" 

" No," he answered thoughtfully, " there are so 
many things worse than being killed." 

Even though there may be danger of physical in- 
jury in most of the strenuous athletic games played 
in college, there are so many things more to be feared 
than the possibility of getting hurt, that if I had a 
son I should be quite willing that he should take that 
risk in order -that he might have a chance at the 
benefits of the training and the exercise. The parent 
who wants to keep his son out of football or basket 
ball because of the danger which he will encounter 
in these games is frequently encouraging him to be a 
molly-coddle. The arbility to face danger and to en- 
dure punishment is what helps to make men out of 
boys, and it is worth risking because of the strength 
of character which it develops. 



168 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

It is hard for the young fellow who has once got 
the athletic fever into his blood to get it out. After 
a hard game or a hard season, especially one followed 
by defeat, I have often heard an athlete vigorously 
affirm that he was through with the whole business. 
There was nothing to it, he avowed, and when he laid 
aside his athletic togs, he swore he would never put 
them on again. Perhaps the next season he was 
tardy in coming out at first, but he could not stay out 
of the game long. Neither danger, nor pain, nor 
exhaustion, nor possible defeat daunted him. The 
game had got into his blood and he had to take it up. 

I have a vivid recollection of " Cap " the night 
after we had been defeated by Chicago. He had 
played a masterly, though a losing game, and had 
come away bearing on his body the scars of battle. 
I called at his house after dinner to offer him my con- 
gratulations on the game he had put up and my con- 
dolences on the unsatisfactory outcome. He was a 
sad looking figure. His nose had been broken and 
some one had kicked him in the eye, which was dis- 
colored and swollen shut. His whole body was 
bruised and sore and he was in a furious temper. 

" This is my last appearance, pos-i-tiv-ly," he 
growled. " There's nothing in it. A man's a fool to 
let himself be mangled up the way I am. I'm out of 
it. Never again for me. If I ever have a son who 
wants to play football I'll lock him up or strangle 
him. It's me in the future for the peaceful life." 

I said nothing, for I knew the outcome. He was 
in the next game as chipper as ever, and the .next fall 
he was the first man out on the field, when it came 
time for practice. He could not keep away from it 



THE ATHLETE 169 

any more than the average man can who has got the 
spirit of it into his system. When the call to arms 
came " Cap " was one of the first men to leave the 
peaceful life that he had so vigorously espoused, to 
face the hardships and the dangers of war. 

In spite of my respect for the athlete and for ath- 
letic training, I have always felt that as far as an 
advertising asset is concerned the athlete has been 
very much overrated. Few students in these days go 
to college mainly because of their interest in athletics 
or in going to college choose an institution mainly 
because of the reputation of its athletic teams. If 
the boy himself who is entering college had the entire 
decision in his own hands the matter might be differ- 
ent, but since, even in the United States, father and 
mother still have a little to say in determining the 
place where son shall pursue his education, the char- 
acter of the athletic teams of the institution under 
consideration usually plays a minor part. It cannot 
be left wholly out of consideration, but it is seldom 
the determining factor in the decision. 

" A winning team is a fine advertisement for the 
school," the undergraduate constantly holds, and I 
am willing for the sake of argument to grant that it 
does its part, but I am equally sure that if it were 
the sort of advertisement that could be " keyed," if 
we could get from our undergraduates a frank, truth- 
ful statement as to the influence which, in each in- 
dividual case, induced them to select the college of 
their choice, it would be found that successful athletic 
teams are in reality rather ineffective in adding to 
the attendance of any institution. That fact, how- 
ever, does not in any way lessen my interest in the 



170 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

athlete and athle4;ics, nor make me think any the less 
that the college that puts money generously into the 
training and development of its athletic teams and 
that encourages physical exercise generally among its 
students is acting wisely. 

As I have studied the careers of our athletic stu- 
dents after they have graduated and gone out of col- 
lege I have been convinced that the benefits of ath- 
letic training do not end at graduation. It is true 
that the man who wishes to make a case against the 
athlete can present illustrations to show that even 
though the men engaged in athletics may average well 
there are still some very notorious dullards who make 
or try to make our athletic teams. The athlete who 
flunks is like the Sunday-school superintendent who 
becomes an embezzler. His intellectual or moral 
failure, as the ease may be, is the more widely adver- 
tised and commented upon because of his other rela- 
tionships. The ordinary student in college may fail 
and nothing be said of it; when the athlete fails the 
fact is commented upon at every fraternity and 
boarding house, is often the- subject of serious faculty 
discussion, and is made the topic for an associated 
press dispatch in the newspapers. The flunking ath- 
lete is like a drunken man in a crowd — he seems far 
more numerous and attracts far more attention than 
the quiet sober citizen who goes unobtrusively about 
his business. For this reason his occasional lack of 
scholarship is much exaggerated and disproportion- 
ately commented upon. It has been my experience 
in executive affairs in college that it is easier for 
almost any other man to receive special consideration 
or special concessions when in scholastic difficulties 



THE ATHLETE 171 

than for the athlete. Whenever it is announced that 
the man who is asking for mercy or for reconsidera- 
tion is an athlete there is very likely to be the stiffen- 
ing of the jaw and the bending backward of the 
authorities, in order that there may be no thought on 
the part of any one that they are not walking and 
acting in accordance with the rule. Perhaps it is 
just as well so. 

The college athlete who has gone out into the more 
active duties of life is a fighter; in college he has 
been trained to fight against difficulties, and he car- 
ries with him the results of this training. He is not 
afraid to tackle a hard proposition, he is not easily 
discouraged, his judgments are more rapid and more 
accurate than those of other men, and he is willing 
even in an apparently losing game to make a try — 
to stick. His athletic training has taught him en- 
durance and has given him a physique which will 
stand hardships, and nervous strain, and long hours 
of work. He has usually learned, also, how to take 
care of his body, and so how to make the most of the 
physical and mental resources at his command. For 
these reasons his chances of success in any work which 
he takes up are greater than those of the man not so 
trained, and that success is quite generally somewhat 
in advance of what might be expected from a study of 
his scholastic record. The effect which his athletic 
training has had upon his body, and the effect which 
athletic practice has had upon his character and his 
mind, all conduce to his energy, his resourcefulness, 
and his self-reliance and so make for his success. He 
is likely to get on faster and to go farther than arr> 
men of similar ability who have not had his training. 



172 DISCIPLINE' AND THE DERELICT 

The struggles and sacrifices which he made in his 
"undergraduate years are more than compensated for 
by the returns which come to him in later life. 

I have read the most that has been published in re- 
cent years concerning the evils of inter-collegiate 
athletics — the extravagantly large amount of money 
necessary to support such a system, the confining of 
athletic training to a very limited number of stu- 
dents, the gambling, drinking, and other moral dissi- 
pations incident to big games, but though I have 
known personally as many undergraduate students, 
athletes and otherwise, as any college officer in Amer- 
ica, I am convinced that these evils have been very 
much exaggerated. I cannot deny that intercol- 
legiate athletics is expensive, and it would be foolish 
to maintain for a moment that it is not accompanied 
by abuses and evils — I can think of no other activ- 
ity, not even religious activities, that is free from 
them — but in my experience as a director and super- 
visor of undergraduate activities it has seemed to me 
that nothing else has done so much as athletics to 
develop real college loyalty, to unify a heterogeneous 
undergraduate body, and by giving an outlet for 
youthful enthusiasm and youthful spirits, to aid in 
the maintenance of healthy college discipline. It is 
true that athletic contests have at times been the op- 
portunity for undergraduate outbreaks and disturb- 
ances, but these occasions have on the whole been rare 
and not infrequently a case of " great cry and little 
wool," of wide newspaper publicity and relatively 
little foundation for the facts alleged. I am sure 
that if it were not for the athletic contests and the 



THE ATHLETE 173 

athlete I should as a disciplinary officer have a much 
harder time than I now have. 

There is the argument that the athlete supports a 
sort of physical aristocracy which maintains a monop- 
oly over athletics and physical exercise and makes it 
possible for the physically elect only to obtain the 
exercise that all need. We should develop a system, 
the promulgators of this argument say, which would 
force every one into athletic sports and secure regular 
and pleasant exercise daily for every one in college 
from the freshman to the President. Such a physical 
millennium sounds alluring, and the theory is beau- 
tiful, but the result is about as likely of attainment 
as those implied in the theories of our socialist 
friends; they sound attractive on paper, but they are 
impossible of realization. In every college with 
which I am familiar there is a predominating per- 
centage of students and faculty who, unless a chain 
were put about their necks and they were dragged to 
the fray would take no part in athletic sports at all. 
There are even more than we might suppose who take 
no pleasure in exercise themselves and who find no 
relaxation in watching other people engaged in 
sports. Whatever can be done to interest students 
and faculty in sports generally, I believe is a desir- 
able thing, but such interest is not decreased by the 
development of athletic teams. As I have seen the 
athlete his training is worth all that it costs — to 
him, to the college authorities, and to the undergrad- 
uate body as a whole, in the development of character, 
in discipline, in college loyalty, and in the binding 
together of the students as a whole. 



THE LOAFER 

I CAUGHT sight of Jack and Eddie and Mac sitting 
in the Arcade as I passed this morning on my way 
down town. They had evidently got up too late for 
breakfast and were "hitting a coke" before they 
subjected themselves to the strain of a ten o'clock. 
The last bell had rung, but they were taking their 
time and giving Eddie opportunity to finish the 
risque tale of his last conquest. Mac had already 
been out of classes this semester for five weeks because 
of a slight illness, but that seemed to him an asset 
rather than a liability, for the instructor knowing he 
had been ill, could not reasonably expect him to get 
into the work vigorously all at once or to come to 
classes regularly or on time. Jack had been out to 
a dance the night before, and not being prepared had 
cut his nine o'clock, and Eddie was taking the cuts 
which as a senior he thought himself entitled to. 
They were good illustrations, these three happy-go- 
lucky souls, of the college loafer — irregular, irre- 
sponsible, unambitious — the type of men who are 
the real menace to-day of undergraduate life in col- 
lege. 

It takes a man of some energy to be a real devil, 
so that the loafer at first seldom gets into anything 
that is difiicult, or dangerous, or not nice; he doesn't 
initiate things; some one else makes the plan, though 
he may trail along behind in an escapade and seem to 
be a real part of the procession. He is a passive, 
174 



THE LOAFER 175 

talkative being ; he Iovbs ease, leisure, sleep, coca cola, 
cigarettes, chocolate bostons, and girls. He is a 
stroller, a hanger on. If, as I am writing these para- 
graphs, I should look out of my window upon the 
broad green expanse of our back campus, I should 
catch sight of him walking lazily under the shade of 
the tall ehn trees of Burrill Avenue, or sprawled upon 
the grass, a girl by his side, a smile on his face, his 
books and his intellectual obligations forgotten. He 
knows the last dance step, the latest gossip, and he 
has seen the last bills at the Orpheum. He would be 
entirely innocuous if he were not allowed to run at 
large. The trouble is he infects the crowd. 

It is not difiBcult to understand the environment 
which conduces to the development of this type of 
student. At home he has neither been given nor has 
he assumed any responsibility. He has had ho duties, 
no regular set tasks; he has done no work; often he 
has been mother's darling. It has usually, at home, 
been a problem as to what should be done with liim 
in the summer vacation when there was no school, 
so he loafed around lazy and discontented. He has 
seldom done well in his preparatory school or high 
school ; he has passed, but neither he nor his parents 
have had any ambitions for him to be a grind or the 
valedictorian of his class. If his mother were asked 
she would probably say, " We are very well satisfied 
with what Clarence has done in high school; he is 
not a natural student, and has never been very strong, 
so that we have never pushed him nor wanted him to 
over-study." And Clarence has done as his parents 
desired and has never overstudied. 

He comes naturally to speak of himself as " no 



176 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

student " and to take a certain pride in the fact that 
this characteristic in some way differentiates him 
from the common herd of undergraduates who do 
their work because they like it, or who go at things 
with energy because it is their duty. He takes his 
commonplace work as a matter of course, just as many 
people assume without trying that they can not learn 
to spell. 

" You had a shamefully low average last semester," 
I remarked to Brinkerhoff the other day, " for a man 
of your training and ability." 

" Well, I'm no student," was his self-satisfied reply, 
which was only another way of saying, " I'm a hope- 
less loafer, and you ought to be satisfied that I got 
through as well as I did." There was no shame on 
his part, no resolve to do better, simply a resignation 
to the inevitable. 

The loafer in college is not always a boy who has 
been brought up in luxury ; he not infrequently comes 
from very humble surroundings ; but wherever he has 
been brought up he has never developed any love for 
work. When he enters college it is without ambition, 
without any definite purpose or object; he has little 
idea of what he wants to do, no love of books, no 
interest in study, no vision of the future. He does 
not know whether he wants to go north or south, 
whether he would like to study art or ceramic engi- 
neering, whether he would prefer to spend his life as 
a missionary or as a vaudeville star. Some of the 
other fellows were coming to college, so he threw a 
few changes of clothing into a suitcase and came 
along, just as he might have joined a camping party 
or taken a hike into the countr}^ Some of the most 



THE LOAFER 177 

confirmed loafers I have known have been men who 
had to work for a part of their living. Loafing in 
college is not, as many people think, a matter of 
money, but of temperament. 

Yesterday a father came into my office to discuss 
with me the possibility of his son's entering college. 

" What course does he want to take ? " I asked in 
order more intelligently to answer his question. 

" I don't know," was the reply. " We have not 
thought much about that. I don't believe George 
has decided on anything yet." 

"What is he interested in? What sort of work or 
study does he like best ? " I continued, trying to get 
myself square with the intellectual compass. 

" He has never shown any special interest in any- 
thing yet. We hoped that after he got to college he 
would develop interest in some line of work." 

" Is he in love ? " I ventured, determined to get 
somewhere if possible. 

" Well, he certainly does like the girls." 

It is this sort, interested in nothing but his senses 
and his emotions, that develops into the loafer. A 
boy will seldom show more ambition in college than 
he has shown at home ; if he has had no vision or pur- 
pose there, he will be unlikely to find one in college. 
We do not change our characters by changing our 
lodging house, and if we have disliked work in Chi- 
cago we shall hardly take to it in Champaign. 

" You haven't done much for Babb in college," a 
fellow townsman of his said to me when I was on a 
visit to the country town from which the freshman 
referred to came. " He's as lazy and worthless as 
ever." 



178 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

" If you have had him here for nineteen years and 
have done nothing for him, how can you expect us to 
reorganize him in six months ? " I inquired. 

" I thought you were able to do everything in col- 
lege/' he replied. But we are not. 

I have found the greatest interest as an executive 
officer in college in getting the peculiar viewpoint of 
the loafer. When I call him for irregularity, and if 
I am shrewd enough to prove to him that these ex- 
cuses which he has offered were not thought sufficient 
on his part to keep him from certain social pleasures 
in which I have seen him indulging, he leans upon 
the prop of all loafers and asserts that the rules of the 
college permit a certain number of cuts to all stu- 
dents, and he has not yet exceeded his limit. " Any- 
way," he goes on, " a fellow can't go to class all the 
time." One of the most common excuses of the 
loafer for not attending class is that of not being 
wakened in time by the proper person. I have a let- 
ter now on my desk from a young fellow dropped 
from college for poor work who says : " A good deal 
of my trouble was due to the ineffective waking sys- 
tem in our house," meaning that the freshman whose 
duty it was to come around and wake him up, some- 
times went to sleep at the switch. The next most 
popular excuse for absence is that he was busy study- 
ing for another course than the one he cut. It never 
seems to occur to him that there are regular hours of 
study far more than adequate for the purposes of 
even the good student, and that it is seldom if ever 
necessary to cut class in order to study. Cutting 
class with him is a habit as regular and as persistent 
as smoking, for every loafer smokes. 



THE LOAFER 179 

He either smokes because he puts in so much time 
loafing that he needs some recreation to keep him 
from getting lonesome, or he loafs because he has 
smoked so much that it has robbed him of the energy 
sufficient to do anything else. The odor of the 
Fatimas which he has burned up floats across the 
desk to me as he comes in to ask me for an excuse 
because of illness; before he steps off the campus he 
has lighted another to stimulate his waning interest 
in life, and wherever you meet him, — between dances, 
at his room, on the street, — he is drawing strength 
and comfort from a pipe or a cigarette. It is the 
badge of his fraternity. 

" Why do you smoke so much ? " I asked Rheims, 
whose restless manner and putty colored complexion 
and yellow finger nails told the story of his devotion 
to Nicotine. " You know it hurts you." 

" Yes, I suppose it does ; but why do you want to 
rob a man of all pleasure ? " That was too much for 
me. 

It is hard for the loafer to study ; there are so many 
easier, subtler, cleverer ways to get by. He means 
to do it — to-morrow, Sunday, next week, before the 
end of the semester, — but he is such an awfully pop- 
ular fellow, he has so many friends to entertain, so 
many dates to keep, so many extra-curriculum duties 
to perform, that he has little or no time to give to 
study. He borrows your notes which he has been too 
lazy or too busy to take himself, and never returns 
them until you go to his room and hunt him up ; he 
questions you about your outside reading and tries to 
get the gist of its content so that he may be spared 
the labor of doing it for himself, he sits by you dur- 



180 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

ing the quiz hours and stealthily cribs your ideas 
which he rephrases so that they seem his own. 
More's the pity, sometimes he does it so well that he 
gets a better grade than you do who have gone 
through the assigned reading with puritanic con- 
scientiousness. 

The loafer is usually a very charming fellow; he is 
selfish, but diplomatic and well-mannered. " How 
does it happen," I asked one of the clan not long ago, 
" that you do so little work about the fraternity house 
while Moore is always at it ? " 

" Moore has no diplomacy," was the reply. " I 
saw at the start that if I didn't talk back and was 
always polite and courteous to the fellows, they sel- 
dom ' fagged ' me ; Moore is impudent, and he has to 
do all the work while the fellows sit around and are 
amused at my line of talk." 

He loves to talk, and he generally talks well and 
knows it. He is usually popular in any crowd, for he 
has never brought on brain fag through overwork or 
overstudy. He can be found at every fraternity 
house sitting before the grate fire spinning his yams 
to any hour of the night. He dislikes going to bed 
even more than he dislikes getting up in the morning, 
and will never think of going so long as he can get 
some one to keep him company. Not infrequently he 
has in him some touch of the genius. He has talent 
without motive power. As I write this sentence my 
mind drifts back to Jim Watson. " Why don't you 
stir up Jim ? " I asked the president of his fraternity 
one day, " he might amount to something if he would 
work." 



THE LOAFER 181 

" Oh, Jim/' was his reply, " Jim's an awfully good 
fellow; he's charming; no one could say anything 
cross to Jim. He's an artist ; he's a poet ; he's a 
dreamer; he could do anything if he would." 

He was correct in his diagnosis; I simply phrased 
it a little differently; Jim was the most delightfully 
artistic loafer in college. He was the sort of fellow 
of whom people were always saying that he would be 
a great man if he ever got down to work; but he 
never did, and he's the most commonplace citizen 
to-day of the country town in which he lives. 

Some people argue that college is a good place for 
the loafer even if he will not do his college work with 
credit. He learns to know people, he picks up a 
smattering of useful information through his daily 
rubbing up against those who do study, and whether 
he puts forth much effort of his own or not he comes 
constantly into contact with people of culture and ex- 
perience and refinement. He is of no great harm to 
the college, they say, and the college may be of untold 
benefit to him. Perhaps so. 

I remember a number of years ago we had in the 
University — I had him in fact in some of my own 
classes — a big lazy loafer who so far as any of his 
instructors could discover never " cracked " a book. 
He had one virtue; he never cut a recitation even 
though he never recited, and he was also an impen- 
etrable wall in football. One day the president of 
the institution, who at that time had general charge 
of all delinquents whether in scholarship or in other 
things, was looking over Mr. Hicks' scholastic record, 
which was no credit to any one. 



182 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

" We can never keep this man," he said to the ath- 
letic director, " even though he can play football. I 
shall have to send him home." 

" Perhaps you are right," said the director, " but if 
you do you will shut him off from any further chance 
of intellectual improvement. He's an exemplary 
loafer who for the first time in his life is associating 
with people of cultivation and of ideals. The Uni- 
versity is doing him more good than he is doing it 
harm, it is helping to make him a man, and so far as 
I can see he ought to be allowed to stay a littla 
longer." Whether the argument was a specious one 
or not, the president consented, and the man stayed 
on and played on. He is a respected successful city 
banker to-day, — he had money — so that perhaps in 
this case at least the athletic director was right. 

I have myself often been the victim of the charms 
of these fascinating loafers. In their own houses, 
and in mine, I have been forced often to yield to the 
magic of their personality. They are good fellows, 
many of them; they have within them infinite pos- 
sibilities, unlimited power, if they would only work. 

A good deal has been said and written about the 
dissipations and immoralities of college life, and 
much that has been written is false. I have been as- 
sociated with college students more than half of my 
life, and I have known thousands of them personally. 
The undergraduate is not free from the temptations 
and the evils which other men 3deld to. There are 
men in college who drink, there are men who gamble, 
and there are men whose lives are not clean, as there 
are in every community, but the sum total of these 



THE LOAFER 183 

and the evil which they perpetrate is far outweighed 
by the loafer in college and the vicious influences of 
which he is the source. It is almost without excep- 
tion the man who has nothing to do or who having 
something which he ought to do yet does not do it, 
who is responsible for the sins and dissipations of col- 
lege life. It is loafing and lack of a really worthy 
ambition to giye a man balance that leads students 
into all the other sins and indiscretions of undergrad- 
uate life. There is no other evil in college to com- 
pare with it, and none so difficult of remedy or of cor- 
rection. 

" I am coming back to college," one of them wrote 
me this week, " and I know you will be surprised 
to hear that I do not expect to give you any more 
trouble." 

" If you are intending to go to class regularly, to 
study faithfully, and to do your work like a man," 
was my reply, " I shall welcome you with open arms ; 
if you are going to loaf as you have done in the past, 
I wish to the Lord you would stay where you are." 

It is hard for the loafer to reform. Sometimes he 
can do it in a new environment and under generally 
new conditions, but the man who has wasted his time 
in college and who stays out a semester or a year with 
the hope that he will gain ambition and self-control 
is often disappointed or disappoints his friends who 
may have placed faith in him. As soon as he strikes 
the old crowd and the old campus the spell is on him 
again; he is like the reformed toper who catches the 
odor of the highball. Last spring a young fellow 
who had been out of college a year returned to try 



184 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

to finish his work. He had previously been a con- 
firmed loafer who had by strategy and luck barely 
escaped dismissal. 

" I'm sorry you have come back, Baker," I said to 
him. " I've expended about as much physical and 
mental energy on you as I think you are entitled to. 
I should not care to give you a permit to reenter un- 
less I can have some assurance that you are coming 
back with a definite purpose to do your work faith- 
fully and well." He gave me the assurance, but 
there was no real enthusiasm in what he did. He cut 
class and fooled away his time trying, of course, to 
keep safely within the limit that would bring him 
passing grades, but he was the same old loafer as 
before. 

" I am hurting no one but myself," is the favorite 
excuse of every young fellow who by irregular habits 
is injuring his mind or his body, but the loafer can 
truthfully make no such assertion. No young fellow 
loafs long alone; he spends little of his time reading 
even trashy or vicious books; he is not given to soli- 
tude or meditation. He must gather friends about 
him and they go out together. There never was a 
loafer in college who did not ruin some one else in 
order that he might have a pal to accompany him on 
his daily orgies of pool and billiards and poker, and 
soft drinks and fussing and vaudeville and the movies 
and local gossip, or whatever it is with which he 
whiles away his hours. 

"You don't need to be afraid of my leading any 
one astray," a young fellow not in college said to me 
when asking my permission to live in one of the fra- 
ternity houses. 



THE LOAFER 185 

" Have you a regular job ? " I asked. 

" Yes, in the daytime," said he. 

" What do you do at night ? " I went on. 

" Nothing," he confessed. 

" Then you are a bad man to live in a house where 
students are supposed to study at night, for nobody 
does nothing alone." 

I said at the outset that the loafer very seldom 
initiates things, and this is true, but he falls easily 
into disreputable habits. The student who does not 
spend his time in study, is not at all likely to be 
spending it in making his own character or that of 
the world better. Most of the men who have failed 
or gone to the bad in college have done so because 
they had learned to loaf. There are few things so 
good for the developing and strengthening of charac- 
ter as work. If one has duties to occupy the major 
part of his waking hours, he is pretty safe. 

The loafer is a far greater foe to scholarship than 
is the man of what we ordinarily speak of as dis- 
tinctly bad habits. Even if he does his work, and 
very frequently he is lucky or clever enough to pass, 
he has no desire to do well. 

" A pass is as good as one hundred to me," I hear 
him say repeatedly, and he preaches the foolish doc- 
trine so assiduously that many innocent and inexperi- 
enced freshmen believe him. I said foolish doctrine, 
for not many practices have succeeded in getting 
more men out of college than this one of calculating 
how near one can come to failing and yet pass. 

" I don't think I should have been dropped," a 
loafer pleaded with me. " I meant to pass ; though I 
did not care to get a high grade ; in point of fact the 



186 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

way I had it figured out I did pass, but the instructor 
evidently did not figure as I did." 

" Evidently not ; they don't always/' was all I 
could say. 

The loafer is a hindrance to all kinds of progress. 
If he gets elected to office it is for the honor and not 
with the idea of doing any work, and the interests 
in his keeping go to the bow-wows ; if he is on a com- 
mittee he is late when it meets or he never comes at 
all ; if he is a member of an organization, he lies down 
sluggishly and retards all advancement. 

I was at a loss to know last fall why an organiza- 
tion in which I was interested was getting on so 
badly. 

" Wlio is your president ? " I asked one of the mem- 
bers. 

" Baird," was the reply, " and he's too lazy to do 
anything himself and too conceited and self-satisfied 
to let any of us do what ought to be done." Most 
loafers in office play the part of the dog in the manger 
admirably. The loafer has done more to undermine 
the faith of sensible, practical people in the value of a 
college training than any other class of student. 
Men can pass over without comment a dozen first 
rate fellows whose lives have been broadened and 
whose ideals have been strengthened and whose use- 
fulness to the community has been increased by their 
college training, but the loafer never gets by them. 
He is an argument hard to meet. 

I was trying to persuade Old Man Elliott who runs 
the hardware store in the country town where I spent 
my childhood that he ought to send his son to col- 
lege. The boy had done well in high school ; he was 



THE LOAFER 187 

ambitious-, and the old man could well afford the 
money. I was getting on pretty well when Bill Haws 
in golf togs ambled down the street leisurely, a 
cigarette in his mouth and a vicious looking bull dog 
tugging at the chain which he was holding. Bill had 
registered at Michigan once and had been fired be- 
cause he wouldn't work. The old. man looked at him 
a moment and shook his head. " Do you think I 
want my boy to look like that ? " he asked. And yet 
Bill Haws had not been injured by college. He had 
been a loafer always ; it had been bred in him by his 
indulgent father and by his foolish mother, but the 
college got the credit for his unambitious lethargic 
life, as in such cases it always will. 

When President Lincoln was being beset and re- 
viled for retaining General Grant, whom many con- 
sidered incompetent, at the head of the Northern 
Army, he replied, " I can not spare this man ; he 
fights." It is this sort that the college needs — men 
who have a purpose and determination to carry it 
through if it takes the skin off, men who will fight 
the hardest intellectual battles stubbornly and per- 
sistently. There is no success, there is no ultimate 
salvation for any excepting through hard, persistent 
regular work; and for that reason, it seems to me 
there is no place in college for the loafer. Especially 
do I feel that this is true in a state university. The 
young fellow who goes to such an institution pays in 
tuition scarcely a tenth of what his education is cost- 
ing the state. Every wash woman and laborer and 
artisan, every farmer and clerk and merchant in the 
state is paying a part of the cost of this young man's 
education, and is doing this with the thought, if he 



188 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

has thought of it at all, that the student should be- 
come a better citizen. Such an institution is no 
place for loafers ; it is a place for men with ambitions, 
with a purpose, with willingness to work and a desire 
to make the most of themselves and to do what they 
can for the upbuilding and the betterment of the com- 
munities into which they go. The quicker a coUege 
gets rid of its loafers the better it will be for the 
loafers and for the college. 



THE FUSSER 

The two sorts of activities in college life which 
invariably make the front page are the activities of 
athletics and the activities of social life. Athletics, 
of course, occupies the center of the stage, but the 
" fusser " is a close second to the athlete when those 
engaged in college activities are bidding for first 
mention in the newspapers. In the case of these two 
activities, as in many another, prominence brings a 
flood of adverse criticism, and the two things in the 
life of the undergraduate student of to-day in the big 
universities which are most severely railed at and 
criticized by the newspapers and by the public in gen- 
eral are inter-collegiate athletics and the students' 
social life. 

Everybody, including those who live in college 
towns and those who are in the state at large, seem 
to agree that the social life of the undergraduate in 
college is excessive, that he goes too much; in fact it 
is quite generally believed by a great many that his 
life consists of very little else than social pleasure, 
and that he spends his time not in study, as he 
should do, but in running from one social orgie to 
another. The young women, especially at a co- 
educational institution where there are usually sev- 
eral times as many men as women, are thought to be 
intemperate in social matters to the extent of break- 
ing down the health of a large percentage of them 
189 



190 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

and of permanently acquiring a sort of social de- 
lirium tremens. Local women, at mothers^ meetings 
and at afternoon sewing circles or bridge whist par- 
ties, look very serious and shake their heads know- 
ingly when they talk of the awful social goings on 
over at the college. 

" Believe me," some maiden of uncertain years 
affirms, " I wouldn't let a daughter of mine do as 
those girls do. It's scandalous, and would ruin any 
constitution." 

'Now the real fact is that the average young womah 
whom I know in college, and my acquaintance is not 
limited, has very little social life, and the average 
man, and I know thousands of them, has still less. 
Eather than there being too much social life, as many 
allege, I am convinced that there is too little. The 
trouble lies in the fact that what there is, is too 
restricted in character and is entered into by too few 
people. A study of the dances given at the institu- 
tion with which I am connected will show two things : 
granted that the number given is large yet it is true 
that never more than ten per cent, of the whole stu- 
dent body is dancing at any week-end and often not 
one half this number, and it is true also that twenty- 
five per cent, of the student body does at least ninety 
per cent, of the dancing. The social work is un- 
evenly distributed. 

I have spoken of dancing as if it were the main 
social activity in which college students indulge. In 
an inland college town in the Middle West this is not 
far from the fact, though there are athletic games 
which bind more strongly than any other activity 
the undergraduate body into a more unified group; 



THE FUSSER 191 

there are the church sociables which reach a consider- 
able number of students, and there are also vaudeville 
and moving picture shows which at one time or an- 
other lure most of the students within their doors. 
Where the college is not situated upon a river or a 
lake there can be no skating, no tobogganing, no 
boating, and no bathing, excepting of a strictly do- 
mestic character. The undergraduate, who at the 
week-end, when his college work is done, is looking 
for somewhere to go with a young woman for pleasure 
or relaxation is practically always limited to dancing 
or to the local moving picture or vaudeville shows, 
and of these two opportunities the former presents 
the more refinement and the less evil and is most 
frequently taken advantage of. 

Both of these forms of social pleasure seem to the 
unthoughtful onlooker indulged in to excess by the 
undergraduate body in general because he does not 
analyze the constituents of the crowd that make up 
the patrons of these social activities. He hears the 
rag-time music pounded out as he passes a dance-hall 
in the evening, he sees the crowds pouring out of a 
vaudeville play-house, and he concludes that students 
in general put in most of their time either at a vaude- 
ville show or at a dance. He does not stop to calcu- 
late that perhaps not five per cent, of the student 
body is dancing and not ten per cent, at the theater, 
nor does he conclude, as he should, as he walks 
through the student district and sees the student 
lodging houses lighted from cellar to garret that on 
almost any Friday or Saturday evening of the week 
at least seventy-five per cent, of the undergraduates 
are in their rooms after eight o'clock not engaged in 



192 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

any active social life at all excepting such as one may 
enjoy through associations with the fellows in his 
own lodging house. 

If the observer who believes that the social life at 
any college or university is excessive would study for 
a time the composition of the crowd that frequents 
the vaudeville theaters and moving picture shows, if 
he would for a time regularly attend the college 
dances, as I have done for the past twenty years, he 
would see that it is largely the same people who sup- 
port the shows and who are familiar with the regular 
change of bill from week to week and from day to 
day. I have talked often with the men who furnish 
the music for these shows, and they all admit that 
there is a deadly similarity in the crowds that come 
daily to these shows. The undergraduate gets the 
show habit as he may acquire the habit of smoking 
or drinking, and one habit is as dominating as the 
others. I imagine that very few college officers have 
attended more student dances during the last twenty 
years than I have, and the thing that constantly sur- 
prises me when I do attend is the limited number of 
students which frequents these parties. It is possible 
before I go to a dance to guess correctly the names of 
ninety per cent, of the fellows who will be there. Of 
course, if it is a fraternity dance the problem is easy, 
for the attendants at such a party will be the active 
members of the organization, but even when I am in- 
vited to the Junior Prom or the Sophomore Cotillion 
or the Military Ball or a Union Dance I have come to 
know the dancing crowd, and I can safely predict 
who will be in the grand march before I get into the 
reception line. 



THE FUSSER 193 

Only a few weeks ago I was discussing this same 
situation with one of our college officers who was de- 
ploring the fact that our girls were going out to 
parties to an extent that was proving ruinous to the 
health of many of them, and she thought the Univer- 
sity should pass some pretty rigid regulations to con- 
trol this situation. 

" How many of our girls," I asked, " do you think 
make up the list of these social debauchees? How 
many ought to be locked up or sent home or put into a 
sanitarium ? " She thought for a moment and then 
replied, " Forty, perhaps," and then thinking again, 
" twenty would very likely include all of them." 
And this is less than two per cent, of our girls. I 
am of the opinion that not more than that propor- 
tionate number of our young men are excessively 
given to dancing and similar forms of social activity. 
I am sure that seventy-five per cent, of the under- 
graduates whom I have known have too little social 
life; instead of the social activities of our college 
being intemperate, the fact is that they are controlled 
by a monopoly of a very limited number of people. 
Five per cent, of our students, to state the case gen- 
erously, have too much social life, twenty per cent, 
have about what normal young people require, and the 
remainder of the undergraduate body have too little, 
and so get out of college crude and inadequately 
trained in social matters. 

This condition of ill-training is intensified consid- 
erably in an institution like the state university, be- 
cause of the large number of technical students in 
attendance, many of whom are more interested in 
acquiring information than in getting a, regil educa- 



194 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

tion, and who look upon time as wasted unless it is 
put in in the acquiring of cold facts which may later 
be put to use in the earning of money. Graduates 
of city technical high schools and junior colleges who 
continue their technical training in college too often 
know and care very little about anything which does 
not seem to them practical, and social finesse they 
think is for girls and liberal arts students. They fail 
to see that as much money even, if that is all they 
want, is earned through finesse and courtesy and an 
ingratiating approach as through a knowledge of 
facts, or if that is putting it a little strongly, at 
least it may be said that no matter how thoroughly 
one may be trained in information or facts these are 
seldom of much use to a man in any business unless 
he can get the ear of some one and hold it without 
physical force or intimidation. 

I believe that colleges in general give too little at- 
tention to the social training of their students. The 
authorities have the feeling usually that there is too 
much social life, that young men and women will 
look after these things themselves, and that the best 
thing the college authorities can do is to sit on the lid 
and discourage excess as much as possible. The 
authorities, also, are not unlikely to feel that study 
and social pleasures are antagonistic, forgetting the 
adage that all work and no play makes for intellectual 
slowness, and that every normal human being needs 
some social exercise. The feeling that every student 
will see to it himself that he gets all he needs might 
be correct if social opportunities were open in college 
to all students alike, and if all students had equal 



THE FUSSER 195 

interest in these things and equal cleverness in adapt- 
ing themselves to new social conditions. 

It is the regular fusser, however, well dressed and 
" high man " with the ladies, who in e.very college 
community with which I am familiar, gives more 
time to society than to his studies, and monopolizes, 
to the exclusion of his sturdier companions, the social 
life of the college. Every organization has one or 
two such men, and they are so adroit in getting rap- 
idly from one place to another that they seem much 
more numerous than they really are. Sometimes 
they devote themselves to one young woman exclu- 
sively, though this concentrated devotion is seldom 
for long, and almost never results in anything serious 
or remotely related to matrimony ; sometimes like the 
busy bee they flit from flower to flower never stopping 
long enough in any one parlor to form more than a 
speaking acquaintance with the inmates. Some 
■fussers try hard to get their names into every social 
pot that is boiling. 

I have a young freshman in mind — Harold I 
think his fond mother named him. He goes tearing 
down the street while I am at breakfast to meet 
Ethel and to carry her books to an eight o'clock, at 
eleven I see him riding with Grace in her dual power 
car, and at three, as I look out of my window upon 
the back campus, I catch a glimpse of him strolling 
languorously with Blanche. I have no doubt that 
before dinner he has paid court to other susceptible 
hearts and that by bed-time he has sat in the easy 
chair at one sorority house at least. He is a hard 
worker, this callow young freshman, but it is not at 



196 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

his books, and unless he takes the Dean's warning 
he is not long for this intellectual world. 

The f usser who devotes himself to one girl is quite 
interesting. I do not mean here to include the young 
man who is mature enough to know his own mind, 
who is far enough along in college to think seriously 
of the future, and whose prospects are sufficiently 
definite to make it possible for him intelligently to 
contemplate marriage. This class of men is not a 
very large one but, however many or few there are, I 
leave them out of the question. The man I have in 
mind is the one who is playing with emotion, who 
thinks or imagines that he is in love, and who grows 
as restless if he must be separated from the object of 
his melodramatic adoration for a few hours as does an 
inveterate smoker deprived for a half day of his 
cigarettes. Such a man can never be a student. If 
he gets out his books for an hour in a half-hearted 
effort to absorb a little information he is likely to 
accomplish nothing. His mind wanders to the last 
walk he took with her or to the next engagement he 
has made, and his eyes are fixed dreamily upon her 
framed picture on his desk. He may stick to the 
books for a few minutes, but it is not long until he 
remembers, perhaps, that she is leaving Lincoln Hall 
at this hour, and he rushes out to meet her and to 
walk home with her. 

Such a man while in this state of mind has an 
even chance of flunking, and no chance at all of do- 
ing respectable work. He would be more useful run- 
ning a soda fountain than in college and very little 
use anywhere. I have occasionally tried to reason 
with him, but I can recall very few cases where I 



THE FUSSER 197 

accomplished much worth while. The social enthu- 
siast who thinks he is in love is not amenable to rea- 
son ; such a disease as his must usually run its course, 
must wear itself out; there is very little that either 
medicine or advice can accomplish, and yet if any- 
thing could be done for him it would be by a physi- 
cian or by a psychologist. 

The game in which the fusser is sitting is not a 
cheap one; if a fellow is to stay with it long he will 
need to have a good income. There are parties and 
cabs and flowers to be considered; there are auto- 
mobile rides and all sorts of excitements to be paid 
for, and refections and confections innumerable to 
be provided. He must constantly be on the alert for 
fear some other more adroit or more generous suitor 
should get ahead of him. It will not seem surpris- 
ing, then, that the fusser is an easy borrower, con- 
stantly behind in his bills, and regularly overhead in 
debt. Not even poker played by a man of bad judg- 
ment, inept at the game, is more disastrous to an 
undergraduate's monthly allowance than is the game 
which the fusser is trying to play. I was talking not 
long ago to a father who has two sons in college to 
each of whom he gives the same monthly allowance, 
and this allowance is not an ungenerous one. His 
elder son was always in debt, always complaining of 
the stringency of the money market; the younger 
boy was satisfied, solvent, and could always show a 
respectable balance in the bank. The father was dis- 
turbed and unable to explain the trouble. I as- 
sured him that the explanation was a very simple 
one; his elder son was playing the social game; he 
had joined the sentimental army of fussers. When 



198 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

the father showed an inclination to doubt the ac- 
curacy of my diagnosis of his son's case I drew out a 
good sized florist's bill against the boy, long overdue, 
which had come to me in the morning mail from a 
local establishment with the polite annotation that 
any effort which I should be willing to make in 
bringing about a speedy settlement of the claim 
would be gratefully received. The father was con- 
vinced. 

It is the fusser who monopolizes the organized 
social life of every college. He is seen at every 
party, glued to a single partner throughout the 
evening. He may come late, but he never wants to 
go early, ten o'clock may find him yawning, but mid- 
night sees him freshening up remarkably, and if the 
party is a formal one and is allowed to run until 
one or two o'clock, he is just getting his second wind 
at these hours and is eager to continue his toddling 
until sun-up. It is he who opposes any attempts 
to regulate the hour of bringing parties to an end on 
the ground that such regulations interfere with the 
personal rights of individuals. The longer the party 
runs, he thinks, the more fun it is, for he never 
allows his real college work to interfere with his 
studies. He would drop dead from fright if he con- 
templated continuous study for six hours, but eight 
or nine hours of continuous dancing gives him great 
exhilaration. The fusser in college reminds me most 
vividly of the country greenhorns in pioneer days who 
felt that it was a waste of time to call on a young 
woman on Sunday evening unless they could sit 
around yawning until three o'clock in the morning. 

It is he, too, who frequently breaks into the man- 



THE FUSSER 199 

agement of social functions, since by being on the 
managing committee of a party he thereby secures 
free admission and so cuts down his expenses. If 
this graft includes free cabs and free candy for the 
girl, so much the better; he is just that much ahead. 

The fusser, stretching his legs before the grate fire 
in his lodging house, lying in the barber's chair get- 
ting a face massage, or sitting on the front porch 
watching the crowd go by, has but one topic of con- 
versation. He is not interested in the supremacy of 
a democratic government in Eussia, or in athletics, 
or in food conservation; he is not interested in labor 
agitations, or in his studies; or in anything that 
makes for the betterment of the community or the 
state; his only topic of thought and conversation is 
girls, singly and in groups, individually and collec- 
tively. What he doesn't know about girls has not 
been written or thought of or talked about. He 
knows them all absolutely, and he has them all tab- 
ulated and cataloged and properly estimated. He 
usually does not agree with you at all in your own 
personal estimate of any individual young woman in 
question and is sure that if you had had his experi- 
ence you would know a deal sight more than you do. 
He knows a lemon from a peach in any garden of 
girls in which he may be wandering, and he is eag- 
erly willing to give you the benefit of his skilled judg- 
ment. You may be bored by his talk after you have 
listened to him for a half hour, but you could not in 
reason doubt his taste or his conclusions. 

I have seen a healthy, enthusiastic freshman come 
home from a pleasant happy evening with a sensible 
normal girl have all the joy and enthusiasm taken 



200 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

out of him by the knowing fusser to whom he con- 
fided the details of his call. The poor freshman is 
pitied, laughed at for his taste, and told that he has 
been wasting his time upon a " dead one." It is 
the fusser who sets the styles in girls as well as in 
dancing and in social forms and conventions. 

The fusser is a social aristocrat. It annoys him 
to meet at any social function one whom he does not 
know or who is not in his own particular social set. 
If he is a, fraternity man, and he very frequently is, 
it galls him to have to associate with " barbs " ; if he 
is a liberal arts student he feels annoyed at having 
to come in contact with the cruder " ags.'' If he 
goes to a dance, he clings to his partner throughout 
the evening; he avoids bourgeoisie crowds of com- 
mon undergraduates, he considers any general col- 
lege function cheap and vulgar; he likes best to get 
into a small exclusive organization for social activi- 
ties where one does not meet so many uninteresting 
people whom one does not know or care for. Any- 
thing that makes for social democracy he discour- 
ages or frowns upon, and if by mistake he stumbles 
into a democratic social gathering, he is unspeak- 
ably bored or gets a lot of sport out of the experience 
by taking his place at a distance, not entering with 
any heartiness into the pleasures under way, and by 
making fun of whatever is done or of whoever comes 
along. He looks upon the whole performance as a 
crude, vulgar jam which affects him only to give him 
ennui or pain. 

' I was talking to the president of one of the most 
prominent of our undergraduate organizations at a 
Union dance last spring about these very matters. 



THE FUSSER 201 

He had spoken to no one apparently during the whole 
evening excepting the young woman over whom he 
had been hovering until he condescended to give me 
a word and a hand-shake. " These parties are a 
horrible bore," he ventured, " one never meets any 
one whom he cares to know or to associate with," 
and the young woman with him simperiugly assented 
to the doctrine. His object in speaking to me, I 
found, was to ask my advice and to obtain my con- 
sent to his organization of a little group of men, a 
kind of a social monopoly, which would make it un- 
necessary for him to come into contact with any ex- 
cepting the most select — he to make the selection. 
I tried to show him the advantage of a wide ac- 
quaintance, the opportunities for training and im- 
provement in the democratic associations which were 
open to him in just such social functions as he was 
then a part of; but he oould not see it; it did not 
appeal to him; he was altogether selfish and narrow 
in his social activities; he hated the crowd. He was 
a good illustration of the typical fusser, who de- 
sires to restrict and dominate the social life of col- 
lege for his own advantage and his own narrow, petty, 
selfish pleasures. 

There are a great many young women in our co- 
educational institutions who encourage this type of 
man. He keeps the furniture in sorority houses 
dusted and polished through his various calls ; he con- 
tributes chocolate bon bons to satisfy the feminine 
craving for saccharine; he has a fluent flattering 
tongue, and he is ready to play the gallant at a mo- 
ment's notice. He so well satisfies the social needs 
of the moment that it seems useless to many so- 



202 DISCIPLINE AND THE DERELICT 

eially nervous girls to encourage the friendship of a 
solider and a less showy man, for fear they will have 
less social excitement and fewer opportunities to 
make social engagements. The popular girl and the 
fusser in college are both of a piece and together do 
much to spread a false idea of what the actual social 
life is of the average young person in college; both 
should be eliminated wherever it is possible. 

The fusser in college is a social menace. His pur- 
pose in enrolling as an undergraduate is not to ac- 
complish really good honest college work ; the college 
is for him simply the theater in which he is to have a 
chance to stage a little social drama in which he will 
be the star actor. He wants to professionalize and 
commercialize the social life of college. All he sees 
in it is an opportunity to make money or to have a 
regular and continuous good time. 

" I don't expect my son to do much work in col- 
lege." a foolish father said to me a few years ago. 
" I want him to have a little social life, to enjoy him- 
self, to acquire polish. He'll get plenty of chance 
to work after he leaves college." 

" And he'll probably leave college very quickly," 
I added, for the man whose object in being in college 
is to get into society, very soon lags behind intellec- 
tually and either withdraws of his own volition, or is 
sent away. The man who gets no social training in 
college is missing one of the most important by- 
products of college life, but the man who gets little 
or nothing else has wasted his undergraduate years. 

The college that does not concern itself with the 
social life of its students, that does not in some way 
control or direct that life so that no one will be shut 



THE FUSSEK 203 

out from opportunities for social training and social 
pleasures is making a grave mistake. The college 
that without making an effort to change matters 
allows its social life to be restricted and controlled 
by a small group of social butterflies is committing 
a crime. I am sure that in the large institutions of 
which we regularly read in the newspapers, the al- 
leged social dissipations, accounts of which are con- 
stantly making the front page, are indulged in by a 
very small per cent, of the whole body of under- 
graduates. It is the social aristocrat of whom, 
thank heaven, there are not many, who dominates 
and controls the social life of every college with 
which I am familiar, to the exclusion of the great 
body of students who most need the training which 
comes from such an experience. There are in every 
college scores or hundreds of young men and women 
who are too shy and too inexperienced to form a so- 
cial world of their own, whose social instincts are be- 
ing repressed, who are being shut out from the life 
which should be freely open to them, and who are 
starving for a normal social life. College authori- 
ties should be wide enough awake to see the situation 
and to meet it, the social autocracies in college should 
be overthrown, and every undergraduate should be 
offered a fair chance for social training and social 
education. 



L'BRARY OF CONGRESS 



019 749 944 8 



